Several people were detained at Chicago’s West Loop Target Thursday night amid a protest outside the store to demand the retailer publicly denounce U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it comes into the crosshairs over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The people were detained at the start of the protest as they tried to block exits and shut down the store, according to the People’s Lobby, which organized the demonstration. Chicago police confirmed to the Tribune that seven adults, three men and four women, were each charged with criminal trespass to property.
The protest, which brought out faith leaders and elected officials alongside dozens of demonstrators, was the latest in a series of actions that have sprung up across the Chicago area over the past week in the wake of federal agents fatally shooting intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last weekend.
Carrying signs that read “Whose side are you on?” and “Stop corporate collusion with ICE,” demonstrators pointed to Pretti’s death and the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month as they called for Minneapolis-based Target to take a stronger stance against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“We don’t want to see corporations take up space and not show up for us,” former environmental justice organizer Emilio Rodriguez said outside the store. “We know that they put profits over people, and we want to show that we’re not standing for that.”
The 26-year-old, who lives in Bridgeport, said that while Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, “we have to take a stance worldwide to show that … if (they) want to continue to make a profit, (they’re) going to have to listen to us.”
Target is among the companies that organizers with “ICE Out of Minnesota” have asked to take stronger public stances over ICE’s presence in the state.
Earlier this month, widely circulated videos showed federal agents detaining two Target employees in Minnesota. Target has not publicly commented on the videos, although its incoming chief executive, Michael Fiddelke, sent a video message to the company’s more than 400,000 workers Monday, calling recent violence “incredibly painful,” without directly mentioning immigration enforcement.
Fiddelke also signed an open letter issued by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce on behalf of more than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies on Sunday calling for “an immediate de-escalation of tensions.” The letter stopped short of naming immigration enforcement directly.
As shoppers peered out from inside the West Loop Target, protesters chanted “Shut it down!” and “Target is complicit, we do not shop or visit.”
Thursday’s action came in advance of a national shutdown planned for Friday in protest of ICE. A National Shutdown website — which calls for a day of “no school, no work and no shopping” — lists hundreds of endorsing organizations from across the country, including several locally based, from Indivisible Chicago to Trans Up Front Illinois.
Several cafes and restaurants across Chicago’s neighborhoods are participating in the nationwide strike, including Bueno Days in Little Village, Drip Collective in West Loop, Anticonquista Cafe in Pilsen, Four Letter Word Coffee in Logan Square/Avondale Dandelion, Coffee Bar in Evanston and more.
People’s Lobby executive director Will Tanzman, in a statement, said, “People across the country are not OK with the devastation and murder coming from the Trump regime, and are not going to allow business as usual from the corporations that are enabling Trump and ICE.”
Southwest Side Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who was among those that spoke Thursday night, vowed “we will not normalize this state of terror.” He called those arrested earlier in the evening “freedom fighters.”
“Corporations like Target have blood (on) their hands. … Let ‘s take them down,” Sigcho-Lopez called out to the small crowd, standing next to a handmade poster depicting federal immigration agents with a Target shopping cart. “Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!”
Chicago Tribune’s Zareen Syed and The Associated Press contributed.