Exclusive: Chicago Teachers Union member lays out plan for undermining ICE, protecting illegals

by Deported.news Staff | October 06, 2025

Chicago Public Schools teachers, with the help of their union, are actively coordinating to undermine immigration enforcement in the Windy City.

In a monthly Workers Over Billionaires Zoom call with immigrant rights groups on Wednesday, Chicago Teachers Union members discussed how they’re making life harder for federal immigration agents working to remove criminal illegal aliens in the city.

CTU Member Kat Zamarron noted union teachers were well prepared when President Donald Trump recently deployed troops to Chicago, thanks to a campaign to educate them about immigration laws.

“In Chicago, they’re not approaching homes in the way that they have in other places, because our people don’t open the doors, because we know what to do,” Zamarron said. “And so, like, we literally forced them to change their tactics.

“Now, like, of course, right, that means, like, they didn’t give up. They’re just doing something different,” she said. “And so now, right, we’ve got our rapid response network across the city, as well, just like in LA.

“At schools, we have protocols so that actually, our staff know what to do if federal agents come to our schools, and we know they’re not allowed in without a criminal judicial warrant, which they rarely have,” Zamarron continued.

The increased immigration enforcement has also solidified relationships between the CTU and others who were not previously “homies,” as well as district administrators the union loves to vilify.

“Building bridges with folks who even maybe very recently did not want to be homies with us, like keeping that door open to make sure we’re actually able to move forward together, I think has been really key in this moment for our collaboration with, unfortunately, … the many bosses and principals,” Zamarron said.

“But it’s effective. It’s keeping our kids safe,” she said, “and then there’s a lot of mutual aid and community defense so that when ICE is spotted, right, schools maybe go on lockdown but also people are making sure that kids get home.

“And so we’re walking kids home, we’re walking blocks after the fact to let people know that ICE was in their area,” Zammeron continued. “We’re letting folks know how to record, so actually, like, even information we’re getting from social media I think is getting a little bit better, a little bit cleaner, than some of the information at the beginning.

“So I would highlight those as a few tactics that we’re working on here,” she concluded.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week ramped up efforts to remove criminal illegal immigrants in the Windy City, where the CTU has abandoned its war against CPS to partner with the district and local elected officials to remind parents they will never share students’ immigration status without a court order, or allow federal agents in schools without a criminal judicial warrant.

On Thursday, Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez told Chalkbeat Chicago her office is leveraging local organizations to gather as many as 50 people to “notify the community” of ICE operations when they surface.

“I am standing here with educators, teachers, school clerks, teachers assistants, social workers and nurses to say that again … They are not welcome to pick up parents and detain them after they drop their children off at our schools,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said at a Thursday press conference. “They are not welcome in our neighborhoods to terrorize, to ask for papers.”

“We’re working currently, it feels weird, but at the Chicago Teachers Union we are collaborating with Chicago Public Schools and with the principal’s association because we know that right now there is a bigger battle than just our bosses and our buildings,” Zamarron said. “And we know this is a situation where even though we have disagreements … this is a place where we have a united front for the safety of, not just our students, … but of our city, because our students are in every neighborhood of the city.”

“And so we’re working on sanctuary teams in our buildings, letting students know how we keep them safe at school,” she said. “And then we have protections that are built into our contracts. Since 2019, we have codified sanctuary language into our collective bargaining agreement.”

Those efforts are not only designed to push back on federal immigration enforcement, but also what Zamarron alleged is a coordinated campaign by billionaires, the federal government, and politicians to target minorities.

“They’re also talking to each other across state lines, across city lines. They’re moving capital across borders all the time at the same time that they’re calling our people illegal,” Zamarron said. “And so we also have to be doing that work. … There’s a reason that billionaires are willing to pour money into candidates like Donald Trump, like even in New York, Andrew Cuomo, who are not going to stand up to them because they know … what the world could be if we actually taxed them and had fully funded schools and fully funded hospitals and public transportation and, like, just an infrastructure that actually gave live to our people.”

In CPS, union members have worked to craft contingency plans to counter immigration enforcement that offer tips for spotting ICE vehicles, a hotline to report agents and notify parents, and teams to escort students to school, though there’s also protections for CPS employees in the country illegally.

“We even have employees within CPS, if they have their own, like, immigration issues that need to be worked out for whatever reason, they can take up to 10 days of leave from work to do that,” Zamarron said. “So they don’t have to go into their sick time, they don’t have to go into their personal time. They don’t have to be consecutive days, so if you have, like, court cases.”

CTU is also taking the lead in educating communities identifying ICE and creative ways to sound the alarm, from text chains to group chats to setting off car alarms.

“How do you distinguish ICE from, like your local police? If you’re in a place where that matters, you might be in a place where it doesn’t matter. And then, like, you know, a cop’s a cop, I guess,” Zamarron said. “Here in Chicago, we get a lot of reports that are Chicago police or state police and not ICE, and our folks are technically barred from cooperating with ICE in that way.”

Many of the union’s tactics to thwart ICE are inspired by the Black Panther Party, she said, pointing to a “duty to fight for freedom” championed by the late “revolutionary black liberation leader” Assata Shakur.

Shakur became the first woman listed on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist list in 2013, 40 years after she was convicted of the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. Shakur escaped prison and fled to Cuba, where she died on Sept. 25, 2025 at the age of 78.

“Now, every kid in Chicago Public Schools has access to free breakfast when they walk in the door, and that’s because of the Black Panther Party did it first,” Zamarron alleged. “And like everything we know for Migra Watch, a lot of the protocols that we set up, like, that comes out of the cop watch that the Black Panther Party started way back in the 60s.”

The bottom line, Zamarron argued, is CTU members and the union’s anti-ICE allies “all have to like, pull together an know also, right that they’re coming for us right now, but they’ll be coming for someone else next.

“And so the more we can stop now, we’re not going to comply in advance, we’re not going to say, like, ‘I’m going to, like, try to be acceptable to fascists,’ like, that’s not – there is no acceptability to these fascists unless you’re, you know, you look like Ivanka Trump, frankly,” she said. “So what can we do to take up space, and do the little bit that we can do right now?”

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