Hours after a video of day laborers being taken in by masked officials from Elgin's town square was shared on social media, Amber Gagliano saw a young woman protesting at the gazebo with a sign that read "ICE abducted someone here."
The actions on Jan. 7 escalated concerns that community members had after seeing and hearing about multiple people being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement along U.S. 290 that runs through town.
KUT has reached out to ICE about the day laborers in the video, but has not heard back confirming the details of what took place that day.
Gagliano said seeing the one-woman protest gave her a sense of duty. In a city of close to 13,000 people, this woman couldn’t be the only one willing to protest ICE, she said.
Gagliano is the administrator of an Elgin community Facebook group with more than 22,000 members. She said she and other administrators agreed to post ICE sightings in town when people started getting detained along 290. But she was surprised to see that the posts were inundated with anti-immigration comments.
“Unfortunately, I think all of us were a little naive of how much better the town was,” Gagliano said.
She said she has always been proud to be part of a community where people show up for one another. Neighbors often repeat what has become the unofficial city slogan: “One team, one town, one family.” So, for Gagliano it was disappointing to see so much division online.
“They’re just getting extra courage behind their keyboard somehow,” she said.
Some have cheered the presence of ICE in Elgin. Others, she said, posted the contact number to report undocumented people to law enforcement.
Gagliano is not the only one that feels like hostility has been on the rise in the city. Multiple business owners declined to speak to KUT News, saying they feared community backlash over their opinions.
Nikolai Finley, another Elgin resident, said he feels like everybody is at each other's throat, especially online. He said that online groups have been particularly volatile since COVID, and now with immigration enforcement in town, it's gotten worse.
“There’s a general visceral reaction more so from one side than the other, which makes it difficult to have a middle ground conversation,” Finley said.
He said he no longer feels safe sharing his thoughts with people face to face, unless he knows the other person well. He said he also worries about people calling each other Nazis for having what he says are “middle ground opinions.”
Finely also said he feels the fear is being amplified by posts on social media.
“When I walk around every single day and I’m out in my community, I don’t see half of the things that are making everybody freak out,” he said.
For people like Melisa Pérez, who is undocumented, the fear feels real. Over the last couple of weeks she has limited the time she spends out of her home. She takes her kids to school, goes to work, picks her kids up and then heads home. Whenever she’s driving she said she always looks for Department of Public Safety vehicles and white or black unmarked SUVs.
Pérez said she knows not everyone looks out for signs of immigration enforcement.
"Maybe because of their [immigration] status, they don’t care,” she said in Spanish. “But because of our status, we pay more attention, we have to pay more attention than the rest and be on alert.”
Pérez works at a grocery store in town. She said the number of customers has gone down, but those coming in often talk about immigration enforcement in the area.
In a town where 44% of the population is Hispanic or Latino, it is not only immigrants who feel tense.
“I’m from here, and it’s scary to wonder in what direction it could go for any of us Hispanics, whether you’re here legally or not,” resident Tracy Alamilla said.
In September, ICE officers were given the OK by the Supreme Court to racially profile people during immigration stops. Dozens of U.S. citizens have been detained across the country since ICE operations ramped up at the start of President Trump's second term.
“[I’m] scared that it could happen to me or that it could happen to one of my kids, because we are Hispanic,” Alamilla said.
Other Elgin neighbors share these concerns. A group showed up at the City Council meeting on Jan. 20 demanding responses about how the city is collaborating with immigration enforcement.
Last week, Elgin officials, including Mayor Theresa McShan, put out a statement condemning actions by ICE that make people feel unwelcome in the community.
"We are also a community where everyone should be able to live, work, and play without fear for their safety and well-being," McShan said. "As a human being, the recent dehumanizing activities and complete lack of compassion, empathy, or understanding by this agency makes my blood boil, and as person of color, it brings back many unwanted memories of past injustices in our country."
McShan said she worried ICE is "on a slippery slope towards targeting other vulnerable communities, many of whom reside in Elgin."
A spokesperson from the city told KUT that Elgin officials are not collaborating with immigration enforcement, and they find out about people being detained at the same time residents do.
Gagliano said she is not at peace and wants to make sure people like Pérez and Alamilla feel safe. After seeing the woman protesting by herself downtown, she began organizing her community. She said more than 100 people attended a protest she put together. She also created a new Facebook group to bring groceries and run errands for those who are too afraid to leave their homes.
“The reason why people move to this town is because the community is so amazing. We really do come together for one another,” Gagliano said. Her focus is to get people to stop hating on their neighbors, and to live up to the city’s motto: “One team one, one town, one family.”
