CHAMPAIGN — Local officials say there’s been no confirmed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Champaign-Urbana this week — but immigrant advocacy groups say their rapid response teams have verified sightings.
In response to questions via email, Champaign County Sheriff Dustin Heuerman said his office received unofficial reports that ICE was in town but has not been notified of anything official.
“I can tell you that ICE has not been to the Champaign County Courthouse this week, which was the concern of some. My office has not been made officially aware of any ICE operations locally, nor has assistance from my office been requested,” Heuerman said.
Social media posts, which referenced locations including Lincoln Square Mall, El Toro in Urbana, Interstate-74 and Cunningham Avenue, circulated online and raised concern among residents.
Champaign Police officials told IPM News officers are generally not notified when federal immigration authorities are in the area and the department complies with the TRUST Act — an Illinois law that bars local police from participating in civil immigration enforcement.
The nonprofit Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is monitoring reports statewide. Senior policy counsel Fred Tsao said the organization receives tips through its hotline and monitors social media posts about potential ICE activity, which it uses to deploy rapid response teams.
“We take those messages, and we also monitor other chats, other Facebook groups, other postings,” Tsao said, “and we use that information to assign people in rapid response teams… to go out and investigate these reports to see whether, in fact, ICE is present.”
Tsao said ICIRR also tracks whether incidents involve use of force, property damage or injuries — potential signs of violations of the state’s TRUST Act.
Ricardo Diaz, a member of the nonprofit C-U Immigration Forum, said recent reports of ICE sightings started coming Monday morning. He said that it’s not the first time ICE has been in the area.
“They have been here, at least once a month, since January,” Diaz said.
Diaz said the two rapid response teams in the Champaign-Urbana area — one working with ICIRR and one with the C-U Immigration Forum — have talked to each other. He explained the teams have training and a protocol that allows them to determine whether a report results in a confirmed sighting.
“Confirmed means that we have triangulated information from more than a couple of sources, or that we have a good enough picture to be able to identify, or [that] unfortunately, we might have somebody affected,” Diaz said.
In response to a request to see the evidence collected by the rapid response team, Diaz shared a video and two photos with IPM News that he said were among the information considered in determining the ICE sightings occurred, along with more details of the reporting process.
Diaz said rapid response team members are people who take risks on themselves to do this work, in an effort to help protect the community.
“We have to be careful, we have our own secure platform to discuss with each other and we have to protect the individuals and the institutions that we’re working with, because we don’t know who’s gonna be targeted next,” he said.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign officials say they’ve investigated several reports of ICE on campus but found no confirmed cases as of Wednesday afternoon.
“The university and University of Illinois Police Department do not assist federal law enforcement in their enforcement of immigration laws, unless mandated by law,” said Abbigail Reisner, senior communications coordinator for the Division of Public Safety, in an email. “Our foremost priority is the safety and well-being of all of our university community members.”
The Urbana Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but has previously posted on social media about their compliance with the TRUST Act.
Diaz said this is a scary time for the community — but he also sees it as an opportunity to increase people’s trust in one another.
He said there’s sometimes tension among community members who disagree on the best way to be helpful.
“Not everybody agrees on which way to help,” Diaz said. “For me, it’s okay that there are many voices and many ways of trying to help, because we’re all pointed in the same direction. We want to do better, we want to help the community.”