Every day, Evanston resident Sara Carlson goes to the Home Depot in Lincolnwood to speak with day laborers looking for work.
She asks them whether they need coffee, food, clothes or other necessities that they may struggle to access. She also gives them Know Your Rights materials and collects their emergency contact information in case they are taken by federal immigration agents. She occasionally does the same at the Evanston Home Depot on Oakton Street.
After two months of these conversations, Carlson has developed personal relationships with the workers, many of whom she knows by name, she said.
Carlson is one of over 100 volunteers for Latino Union of Chicago, a nonprofit that aims to empower and support day laborers, household workers and other contracted workers. Since mid-September, Latino Union has organized these shifts through its Adopt a Hiring Corner initiative, where volunteers build relationships with day laborers across Chicago and Cook County to provide them with a network of community support.
On Nov. 5, Carlson was unable to make a shift at the Lincolnwood Home Depot until 3 p.m. Another volunteer could only be there until 1 p.m. In the lapse, two workers were reportedly taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a text alert from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Carlson identified one of the workers taken as an older man she had grown close to.
“It broke our hearts because we’ve developed such relationships with these individuals,” Carlson said. “But having those relationships allowed us to immediately call all the guys that we know and make sure that they were safe… The biggest thing we’ve built is trust with them, not just for protection from ICE, but for basic human needs.”
These relationships have become a critical resource for workers and their families, she said. Volunteers have also connected workers to legal resources after detainment, said Geovanni Celaya, a migrant worker organizer at Latino Union. Carlson added she believes the volunteers’ presence has been a deterrent for ICE agents.
Before the program began, Celaya said he was already connecting individual day laborers to rapid response networks in the Chicago area. However, when the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Midway Blitz on Sept. 8 — which led to a surge of immigration enforcement operations targeting Chicago and nearby suburbs — Celaya spearheaded the Adopt a Hiring Corner initiative to establish a more consistent presence for workers to rely on.
“In many instances, the response is after the fact of detainment, and it becomes very difficult to know who got detained when you’re not there and you don’t have an existing relationship with the day laborers,” Celaya said. “We understand that just looking and watching out for others isn’t enough.”
The program takes inspiration from one of Latino Union’s national partners, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which conducts similar efforts to protect workers in Southern California.
According to Celaya, ICE detentions leave a “residual impact” on the community, with detained workers’ families left scrambling to find food and a stable income. Local businesses and witnesses to the incidents are also inevitably impacted by ICE activity, Celaya added.
Adopt a Hiring Corner allows mutual aid and collaboration to flourish, Celaya explained.
“We’re caring for our neighbors how we’d hope someone cares for us,” he said. “(Day laborers) are capable of so much that could contribute to making our communities beautiful… (We’re) making sure that they can do something that gives back to the community.”
Adopt a Hiring Corner is just one of Latino Union’s many initiatives to keep day laborers safe. Twenty-five years ago, the organization was founded by three women who were temporary workers seeking to improve their working conditions. Latino Union’s early work led to labor victories like the passage of Chicago’s first Day Labor Ordinance in 2002 and the founding of the Albany Park Workers’ Center in 2004.
Angie Lopez, Latino Union’s suburban outreach specialist, said day laborers continue to be frequently exploited by employers, especially because they are often in precarious economic situations.
Day laborers’ work to improve the community inevitably comes at the cost of their labor rights, she said. She added that workers have told volunteers stories of being withheld thousands of dollars in pay from employers. Through Adopt a Hiring Corner, Lopez said, the nonprofit wants community members to become more aware of those stories.
“This need of connecting community members to the experiences of vulnerable members of the community was already present before the immigration enforcement increase,” Lopez said.
Looking ahead, Latino Union plans to build on the initiative. According to Celaya, the organization is currently pushing for a Chicago ordinance to create physical sites at recognized hiring corners that provide shelter, legal resources and a place to meet immediate needs. Such citywide sites would overcome limitations to current initiatives, which are limited by volunteer capacity.
Celaya emphasized that the issues laborers experience are not new. But in the past year, they’ve only worsened.
“Immigration enforcement has only intensified and empowered abuse,” Celaya said. “How do we make sure that we create change that sticks around? One, a community-based solution to meet immediate needs, but then also working towards something that has a concrete impact that can last longer.”
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