CHICAGO — She got to the base’s main gate at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, dressed in her Army boots and a red and black dress adorned with embroidered flowers, one of two identical dresses she and her daughter received from her aunt on a family trip to Guadalajara.

The boots, she said, were for confidence, the dress to symbolize her Mexican heritage.

Lina Alvarez spearheaded a protest outside Naval Station Great Lakes on Sept. 6 that drew hundreds of people opposed to its use as a base of operations for President Donald Trump’s planned immigration “blitz” on Chicago.

Four days later, the 42-year-old retired U.S. Army sergeant first class returned to the North Chicago base alone, carrying two flags — American and Mexican — bound together as one and a poster board on which she wrote in green marker:

IMAGINE

4 deployments

IEDs

Small arms fire

Indirect fire

Soldier’s suicide

PTSD

But I must prove I’m American when they ask?

“I came here to be a voice for people who are too scared to come out here,” Alvarez said. “I came here to try to make the world a little bit safer for my daughter. I came here because last Saturday was the first time I felt a little bit of hope.”

While the Trump administration has singled out Chicago for immigration sweeps this month — dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” — and a possible National Guard deployment aimed, he’s said, at curbing the city’s endemic crime, those threats have stirred considerable pushback from residents and leaders across the suburbs who have organized protests and publicly condemned the spectre of federal incursions.

Tensions over immigration enforcement were heightened Friday after the agency reported that one of its agents shot and killed a man who struck and dragged the officer during a traffic stop in west suburban Franklin Park. The agent suffered severe injuries, the agency reported.

But suburban protests had mounted even before the shooting. In Downers Grove a few hundred people rallied Sunday outside a hotel after immigration advocates spotted Department of Homeland Security vehicles in the parking lot and suspected federal agents were staying there.

A day earlier, a similar-sized crowd gathered near a Wheaton grocery store to protest federal immigration raids, some carrying signs that read: ICE is not welcome here. And on Friday, dozens protested outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview.

More rallies have been scheduled in Broadview and in other communities in the coming days, as suburbs that were once Republican strongholds have turned reliably Democrat-blue in the past decade. The demonstrations reflect both the disdain for Trump among an increasingly less conservative electorate and a significant suburban immigrant population that surpasses that of the city itself.

“It’s been historic,” said Cristobal Cavazos, co-founder of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage and Casa DuPage Workers Center. “I’m just so proud of our level of activity. When I first got into activism, the suburbs were seen as a land of conservative white folks. But that’s changing.”

Suburban mayors speak out

As ICE activity has ramped up, some suburban mayors have spoken out against the raids.

“We have communicated in partnership with the county that uninvited, unwanted and unjustified (presence) from ICE is unwelcomed,” Maywood Mayor Nathanial George Booker said in a statement. “Together, we will ensure that no show of force is stronger than a united community.”

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss has joined protesters opposing ICE actions, going online to describe the situation as an emergency in which “we are under attack.” He has gotten rapid response training and gone to Pilsen to warn residents to know their rights in case of ICE detention, saying it’s “unacceptable” for masked federal agents without any identification to “snatch” people off the street.

In North Chicago, where DHS and ICE have a temporary office at Great Lakes Naval Station, Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. joined a news conference with Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, who spoke out against ICE.

“If people have broken the law, they should be detained and brought to justice,” Rockingham later told the Tribune. “But we have a 40% Latino community, and the majority of them are hardworking, they have homes, they pay property taxes, and they’re living to raise a family. They shouldn’t have to live in fear. That’s not right.”

Both Rockingham and Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham emphasized that their police departments won’t cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement, a policy which is set by state law.

In west suburban Broadview, protesters have repeatedly marched and prayed outside an ICE facility there that Mayor Katrina Thompson said would be used as a primary processing center for detainees for about 45 days.

Thompson didn’t criticize the operation, but issued a statement that the village police would work with state and Cook County law enforcement to maintain safety and order as ICE operations unfold.

“Additionally, because Broadview respects the rule of law, we will defend the constitutionally protected right to peaceful protest and will accept no interference with that right,” Thompson said. “Simultaneously, we will reject any illegal behavior that puts Broadview police officers’ safety or the safety of local businesses and residents at risk.”

While the suburbs are home to a sizable immigrant population, the municipalities have not always been welcoming.

When Texas sent busloads of immigrants to the region in 2023 and 2024, most affected suburbs immediately sent the arrivals to Chicago, which officials said was better equipped to handle them as a sanctuary city. Several suburbs, citing a lack of resources for immigrants, passed ordinances restricting the buses or preventing migrants from being housed in their communities.

Earlier this month, a group of 50 people — some holding signs with messages like “stop illegal voting” — gathered in southwest suburban Orland Park for a tea party bus tour in support of a proposal to require documented proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.

‘The strategy is working’

While the Trump administration appears to be walking back threats to deploy National Guard troops, Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday urged residents to remain vigilant in the face of what he expects will be increased ICE activity.

“They clearly have not gone out full force yet here with seemingly the number of people from ICE that they intended to have on the ground,” Pritzker said. “I haven’t seen all of those folks yet, but I anticipate that we will.”

Looming immigration raids have already caused the cancellation or postponement of Mexican Independence Day events slated for this weekend in Chicago, Waukegan and Wauconda.

It’s unclear how many people have thus far been swept up in the immigration blitz. At least three people were reportedly arrested along Archer Avenue on Chicago’s Southwest Side earlier in the week, while unconfirmed ICE sightings have been reported in Cicero, Elgin, Arlington Heights and Des Plaines.

Evanston’s mayor warned of ICE agents possibly descending on the north suburb, telling local news site Evanston Now that he’d been told a DHS helicopter was spotted flying along the lakefront Monday afternoon.

The mayor, who is running for Congress to succeed U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, told the Tribune that ICE was in Evanston Wednesday and on Thursday detained someone, but he did not have further details.

Biss confirmed that a city worker unknowingly ticketed an unmarked Homeland Security vehicle Wednesday, but the ticket was to be rescinded because the city does not ticket law enforcement vehicles being used for work.

“ICE is deliberately keeping us guessing to not only harm some people but terrify many more,” he said. “It has nothing to do with public safety or even with immigration. It’s about targeting people based on race and ethnicity.”

Homeland Security officials said Wednesday that federal agents “arrested several dangerous criminal illegal aliens in the sanctuary city of Chicago.” The release named about a dozen arrestees.

A previous Tribune analysis of ICE data suggested that many people previously arrested by the agency had no known criminal record.

Immigrant rights advocates saw a surge in hotline call volume this week, according to one of the leading groups — at one point fielding five times as many calls in a single day than they typically received in an entire month prior to Trump’s inauguration.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights family support hotline received 500 calls on Tuesday alone, with the “vast majority” reporting ICE sightings, Lawrence Benito, executive director at ICIRR, told reporters Thursday morning at a news conference in Brighton Park.

Before the start of the Trump administration, the hotline received about 100 calls per month, he said.

The coalition did not have an estimate for the number of people detained this week, but it thinks the total is higher than initial federal reports because it knows of individuals who have been arrested but not included among the names publicly posted by the administration, ICIRR spokesperson Brandon Lee said.

Cavazos, the DuPage County immigration advocate, said volunteer patrols across the city and suburbs have been able to educate the public on their rights and thwart ICE activity.

“A lot of these raids and operations are failing because people are not opening the door, they’re not talking, they’re not signing anything,” he said. “ICE is going away empty-handed. … I think that the strategy is working.”

Outside the Downers Grove hotel that has been the site of repeated protests over possible federal agents staying as guests, Lombard resident Bernadette Young admitted she’s questioned if the protests or rallies she’s attended over the last nine years make a difference. But she remained hopeful the demonstrations help raise awareness.

“It brings attention to the cause and it lets people know that we’re paying attention,” the York Township Democrat said.

Naperville resident Katie Scott agreed.

“It’s important to be out here,” said Scott, one of eight people protesting at the hotel Tuesday afternoon. “We want ICE to know that we’re watching what they’re doing.”

‘What did I come home to?’

Lina Alvarez is not a community activist. She doesn’t think of herself as being affiliated with much.

“I feel like I’m just a mom and someone who loves my community,” she said. “But it’s hard to live under this administration.”

A North Chicago native, she joined the Army National Guard at 17 in search of a way to pay for college.

She became an active-duty Army soldier after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and spent two decades in the military, driving tactical convoys and later, overseeing logistics. She was deployed to South Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan before her retirement in 2023, military records show..

In that time, she said, she had to stay silent through the racial rhetoric of her then-commander in chief and some fellow soldiers.

“We’ve got to build a wall,” she remembered one soldier telling her during Trump’s first term. “And you’re in charge of it.”

Back home in North Chicago looking for ways to give back to her community, she started substitute teaching at the local school district.

“I wanted to decompress,” she joked.

One day this past July, she answered a phone call from her sister who, in a shaky voice, told Alvarez her 14-year-old nephew had been surrounded by four suspected ICE agents in a gas station parking lot near his home. They wore tactical gear, the teen reported to his mom, and questioned if he spoke English, if he was Mexican.

The gas station attendant, who recognized the teen from his frequent patronage, rushed to his aid, Alvarez recalled being told. He yelled at the agents to leave the boy alone, that he was an American citizen. In the commotion, Alvarez said, her nephew was able to slip away and run home.

The news left Alvarez enraged and scared. Some of her relatives, she said, are undocumented immigrants.

“We live in fear,” she said. “And it hurts. … We don’t know if they’ll be here.”

After the incident, Alvarez said the family downloaded a location-sharing app. She prohibited her daughter, 11, from riding her bicycle “unless she’s with, and it sounds horrible, but unless she’s with a group of friends who are not only Spanish.”

Then, last week, her brother called Alvarez with a request. He and his son work as outside contractors at the naval base. And despite both being American citizens, they were scared to go to work with ICE agents amassing there. He asked if Alvarez could shuttle them to their respective shifts, hopeful that the sight of her license plate identifying her as a military veteran would provide safe cover.

She asked herself: “What did I come home to?”

Then she started to form a plan to stage a protest at the naval base on Saturday.

Alvarez contacted local advocacy organizations and asked them to help spread the word. She and her daughter canvassed retail stores, stopping strangers to ask them to join, or to drive by and honk their horns in solidarity.

At the least, she figured, there would be six people protesting: She and her daughter and four other relatives who pledged to attend. Instead, hundreds came. Some estimates put the total at 600; Alvarez said the crowd near her looked the same size as her former military company: 200 people.

The moment filled her with love and pride for her community. And it meant even more to have her daughter there, she said, joking that she “got to look like a cool mom.”

When Alvarez was growing up, she said her stepfather discouraged them from speaking Spanish, preferring instead for the children to focus on their English. He didn’t want them to be thought of as being Mexican, with whatever negative connotation could be thrust upon that label.

“I understand my parents had their reasoning and they survived their circumstances, but I want the opposite for my daughter,” she said. “I want her to be a proud Mexican and an American. And if she has to stand up to people who don’t want her here, I want her to have that strength early on.”

That’s one of the reasons why Alvarez returned to the naval base Wednesday and why she plans to be out there again, as long as she feels it’s helping, even if she’s the only one.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Stacey Wescott, Olivia Olander, Richard Requena and freelance reporter Alicia Fabbre contributed.)

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