Steve is fine/uninjured. Some neck pain from being tackled. His biggest concern while in custody was what was happening to people outside the facility since he couldn't hear any of the munitions from inside. In typical Steve fashion, he also made a number of new friends while detained.

"It’s just ongoing ethnic cleansing. It’s just guys in masks moving swiftly, picking people off that they know no one will care about and no one will plan a protest for. No one will lower the flag for." Really brilliant work on this fucking nightmare.

I worked with the reporters at @unraveledpress.com and the Chicago Reader's @mulchy.bsky.social yesterday to cover a brutal day of ICE activity in the Chicago suburbs. By day's end, immigration agents had killed a man and, only a few miles away, subjected protestors to tear gas and pepper balls.

Some personal context on this reporting: All of this happened just a few miles from where I grew up, in the near west Cook County burbs. My mom and her friends rode their bikes through these neighborhoods and around the ICE facility where militarized agents assaulted community yesterday.

We are on Instagram and TikTok and Reddit and YouTube and we have an email list we rarely spam you from and also one of those crazy things called a website Find us everywhere, trust no platform's permanence

Hi, notifications are a disaster, too many new followers on too many platforms 🫠 Please don't DM! Text tips only! Reminder: this account is run by 2 journalists, @peoplesfabric.com / @ravengeary.bsky.social We are not a substitute for your hyperlocal rapid response networks! Find each other

New It Could Happen Here Mia talks with Unraveled journalist Raven about the impending deployment of the National Guard, ICE and the Border Patrol to Chicago and how the city is preparing to resist. @miawong.bsky.social @unraveledpress.com www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

This was incidental to our main line of reporting but it’s astounding how quickly CPD’s license plate reader network has expanded in less than three years. Your every move is tracked, and in exchange, they still can’t clear cases.

Automated license plate readers "are seemingly popping up everywhere—including 650 new cameras in Illinois cities since 2023." Flock "collects 20 billion license plate scans per month." "[W]e don't really have privacy or rights anymore.” #Illinois #USA #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #Policing #Genocide

If you want to get an idea of what your local department may have purchased with these grants (2/3 of the total went to surveillance tech), we mapped them all for you.

Now that these license plate readers have proven so dangerous to the concept of Illinois as a safe haven for everyone from undocumented immigrants to abortion patients, we of course had a number of questions for Raoul's office about Flock & the ORC fund. They did not reply to our repeated requests.

CPD spent nearly all of their ORC money on overtime costs, not new cameras. But in reporting this, we got an updated number of ALPRs from CPD: They've added almost a thousand ALPRs since WBEZ last reported on them in April 2022. At the time, they reportedly had 433. Now they have 1,386.

Denver recently announced they were going to stop sharing their network with Loveland, Colorado after learning they had been sharing access to their network with Customs & Border Patrol agents.

Some communities aren’t waiting for the state or Congress to take action. Oak Park’s board voted this month to terminate their contract with Flock. Austin, Texas recently did the same.

Some investigations are happening: The IL Secretary of State has said he is auditing departments’ use of Flock. U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi has initiated a Congressional investigation into Flock’s business practices.

All of this surveillance is in response to an overblown panic created by the retail industry. “Targeting people who engage in more routine shoplifting with inflated penalties in an effort to get them to implicate others is reminiscent of the tactics of the War on Drugs,” said Ed Yohnka (ACLU).

These companies are of course deeply committed to advancing their AI practices. They promise police departments an ever expanding trove of data on people's movements and travel patterns, linked to personal identifying information scooped from data brokers. ALPRs form the lynchpin:

We mapped all of the grant recipients, the amount they were awarded by year, and how they spent the funds.

Over $3.1 million was spent on Axon’s Fusus, a real time crime center platform that integrates private and public surveillance feeds as well as license plate readers and other data. In Oak Lawn, for example, their Fusus integrated camera network swelled from 16 cameras in 2019 to 1,073 by 2024.

Oak Brook came out on top with the biggest award, receiving over $1 million dollars. This paid for ALPRs, body cameras, and real-time crime center software (Fusus), but also lesser known tech like StarChase GPS launchers.

Last week we reported on a Palos Heights cop who shared his Flock password with a DEA agent. Logs show the agent ran 24 searches, just a week after Trump’s inauguration, for an “immigration violation.” Raoul's office did not respond to our questions about whether there would be an investigation:

Recent reporting from 404 illuminates a major concern re: Flock’s ALPR data specifically. ICE desperately wants access to their database, and in some instances, has already used it:

In Illinois, 100+ police departments were awarded $15 million to fight organized retail crime. $5.6 million went toward ALPRs and software, mostly with Flock Safety. Some cities, like Wheaton, installed dozens of cameras despite significantly low crime rates.

@joeyneverjoe.bsky.social first reported on this pattern in May. It's a familiar tale: corporate backed media worked in tandem with police to gin up fears of mass theft rings. Prosecutors jumped onboard. In CA, hundreds of millions of dollars are now promised to cops to protect retail interests:

NEW: In what appears to be one of the largest expansions of surveillance in IL history, we found hundreds of new Flock license plate readers—all paid for by AG Kwame Raoul's office in the last 3 years. Issues with Flock Safety's data sharing practices are mounting. Will our sanctuary status hold?

“It is absolutely in the public interest to do this kind of journalism and the fact that the [Flock] CEO wants to write this off as clickbait shows he wants to disregard legitimate criticism,” EFF’s @maassive.bsky.social told @unraveledpress.com. unraveledpress.com/a-dea-agent...

We reached out to the DEA Chicago Division for more information about the incident, and asked whether there will be any kind of discipline issued to the agent who used the password. A spokesperson did not answer our questions.

The chief says Hutchinson has been disciplined (we don't know the terms of that), and officers will be retrained on security practices. “To be safe, not a single search that goes through should be unaccounted for," @eff.org director of investigations Dave Maass told us.

Back to Todd. Det. Hutchinson has worked alongside DEA agents on a task force since 2023. He claims he never authorized them to use his Flock database access for immigration searches, only drug related investigations. "Way to go," another agent writes upon learning their access has been revoked.

@404media.co first reported on this back in May. Data audit logs obtained by anonymous researchers showed that cops across the country had access to license plate info collected by Flock Safety, even in states (like Illinois) where police are prohibited from assisting immigration enforcement:

NEW: A Palos Heights cop has been disciplined after sharing his password to a vast license plate reader database with the feds. A DEA agent used Detective Todd Hutchinson's login for 24 immigration related searches in late January. We've obtained a memo from PHPD along with chat screenshots:

"Sorry man. Keys had to be taken away." "A Palos Heights police officer [Todd Hutchinson] has been disciplined and retrained after sharing his login information to a massive license plate surveillance database with federal agents." #Illinois #USA #Policing #Deportation #EthnicCleansing

Cops have arrived for real now. Protesters have made the decision to leave and move the rally outside rather than risk arrest. The room has emptied considerably. As they walk out chanting, some job seekers applaud. Flyers and zines are scattered on the floor. The DHS employees are all giggles.

Pretty astonished to see activists untouched so far, security appears to be taking a hands off approach and letting the fair go on. CPD is here—but not for the protest, they have two officers with a hiring table of their own.

Protesters interrupting the CBP hiring chanting, "shut it down! shut it down!"

This big gap in the room is where job seekers would be lined up to talk with USCBP. Instead, everyone is steering clear of their table for now.

Some of the people in line to apply for other companies are being handed these pamphlets. Hotel security here less than thrilled.

Happening now: protesters in Chicago are interrupting a hiring fair at the Congress Hotel, where U.S. Customs and Border protection is recruiting today. Banner reads, "stop kidnapping our neighbors!" It's quite the scene in here, and the DHS table has been blocked for several minutes already.

In this week's Make it Make Sense, Trump sacks Chicago immigration judges, Pritzker eases eviction protections for people accused of "criminal trespass," and Chicago's Disability Pride Parade takes to the Loop this weekend. | ✍️ Shawn Mulcahy and Salem Collo-Julin

Activists are now calling on state and county officials to shut down the facility. While overnight immigration detention is also explicitly banned in Illinois, detainees inside the facility have reported stays lasting up to a week in inappropriate conditions.

On Friday mornings, ICE transports detainees to Gary, Indiana for deportation flights. Police departments in Illinois are forbidden by state law from assisting with immigration enforcement operations, though some appear to be stretching this definition by assisting with crowd and scene control.

On June 6, federal agents called suburban police for backup at the ICE facility in Broadview, IL. An agent inside the facility who identified herself as "Officer Riley" called 911 to request help with protesters. The 911 dispatcher commiserates with her, and adds, "hats off to ya!"

A few more photos of these DHS guys from their recon mission yesterday at the Puerto Rican Museum in Humboldt Park.

in this week’s make it make sense: 👉 a dispatch from chicago’s immigration court, where masked federal agents have been disappearing immigrants & targeting protesters 👉 the illinois secretary of state hits local cops for “illegally” using license plate readers (via @juggaloreporter.bsky.social)

Hey Bluesky, let's play a game, shall we? It's called "distributing these photos as widely as possible." This man assaulted community members and threatened journalists yesterday. We sure would love to know more about him. Recognize him? Please contact us!

This one sat on me (ravengeary.bsky.social), lol. Sounds fake but I'm serious. Was upstairs watching them from court waiting area. He walks up and sits in the tiny chair directly next to mine with no space in between, on purpose crammed in my personal space. Just an utterly deranged human being

If you think you recognize any of these men seen in Chicago on Wednesday based on these tattoos, please send us a message. Signal is unraveled.66.

It was a frantic day for Chicagoans yesterday as ICE operations in the city escalated. Agents abducted a longtime organizer at an ICE check-in site, and separated families inside immigration court. City council members and activists tried to halt the vans. CPD was there:

Collecting clear, non potato quality photos and screengrabs of presumed immigration agents involved in detentions and raids nationwide for research purposes. If you stumble across any in your daily doomscrolling, please forward! Email in bio or Signal is unraveled.66

If you're in the Chicago area and you recognize these tattoos, please shoot us a message. Thanks! 🩷