Marisel Vera
No Latinos Are Safe From ICE
ICE bullying the National Puerto Rican Museum of Arts and Culture (NPRMAC) in Chicago's Humboldt Park on July 8th was a message to all Latinos. None of us, even we Puerto Ricans who are US citizens, are exempt from the federal government's immigrant round up. Latinos for Trump (Puerto Rico's governor Jenniffer González-Colón was vice president) were under the illusion that they were exceptions. Latinos for Trump are finding out that they were mistaken.
What Homeland Security didn't know is that they picked on the wrong community. The press conference at the museum the following day, the well-attended Barrio Arts Festival on the museum grounds a few days later, demonstrated the solidarity that Puerto Ricans have with other local communities. For example, for years, Humboldt Park sheltered four undocumented women. Humboldt Park is both a park and a neighborhood where Puerto Ricans have lived since the 1940s. My own parents came in the 1950s. My father was a factory worker and our family of eight lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a roach infested building on the north side of the park.
The Puerto Rican community has a long tradition of struggle against political repression beginning with the 1966 riots on Division Street when a white police officer shot teenager Arcelis Cruz after the first Puerto Rican Parade. People in power like to use the word riot when people fight back, but they are really rebellions or uprisings against repression. Chicago Puerto Ricans were lauded as the nice Puerto Ricans unlike our troublesome New York cousins who had been in the US longer. Now we were a problem. The Red Squad, a special police unit, came down hard, harassing, infiltrating, and spying on groups like the Spanish Action Committee and the Young Lords.
For over fifty years, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) was under attack. The FBI raided their offices, tried to land a small plane on the roof of a member's house, forced their way into homes with guns drawn, terrorized the community by knocking on their doors, picked up and detained people waiting for the bus, placed road blocks on three mains streets--Division, North Avenue, and Western--and dragged people out of their cars. They planted agent provoteurs. A Puerto Rican professor was assassinated. The FBI used grand jury subpoenas as a witch hunt to find out more about the independence movement; people were jailed when they refused to testify. All because the PRCC was a leader in the campaign to free Puerto Rican political prisoners and was and still is a leader in the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.
In 1977, a week before I was to graduate from Roberto Clemente High School, hundreds of police invaded the park like the US Army on a military mission. Like previous years, families had gathered in the park to picnic after the Puerto Rican Parade. A white police officer shot into the crowd killing Julio Osorio and Rafael Cruz, unarmed young men, in front of relatives and friends. Police beat people up, including women and children, chasing them on their horses, sic’ing their German Shepherds on them, throwing men into paddy wagons and squad cars and keeping many of them locked in them overnight. But la gente fought back, including gang members who rode up on their motorcycles. Police went to local hospitals and dragged injured Puerto Ricans out of emergency rooms. This blatant use of force ignited a two-day uprising; stores were looted, buildings were burned. The police stopped the fire department from putting out the fires. A thousand people marched down to City Hall the following week demanding that the mayor, the police, and the police chief be held accountable. The families of the murdered young men sued the City. The following year, community members testified about the police actions at a People's Tribunal. As community leaders left the tribunal, the police attacked them and hauled them off to jail.
Yet the people continued to fight back. Hundreds of people marched down Division Street during the first Puerto Rican People's Parade in 1978 despite the FBI perched on top of the bridge of St. Mary's Hospital, training machine guns on them. This is the community that Homeland Security misjudged.
The day after ICE came to the NPRMAC, the museum held an emergency press conference with community members, city officials, and representatives from neighborhoods throughout Chicago to show support for the Humboldt Park community and each other. The message back to the Department of Homeland Security: ICE OUT OF CHICAGO.
"We will not allow this bullying to happen here," said Veronica Ocasio, Director of Education and Programing. "This community will always stand for the righteous, for justice, for the voiceless, for the marginalized, for the disenfranchised...we will stand together."
26th Ward Alderperson Jessie Fuentes reminded us that everything we have in Humboldt Park did not come easily to Puerto Ricans and everything came out of struggle including the nearly 60-foot-high steel Puerto Rican flags on Paseo Boricua. As Fuentes said, "It is collective power that makes everything possible. When they come for one of us, they come for all of us."
Today, Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park have been displaced by gentrifiers but the core and spirit of the neighborhood is Puerto Rican. On either end of Division Street, the two flags designate Paseo Boricua, part of Barrio Borikén, forever a testimony to Puerto Ricans like my family who made Humboldt Park their home.
PRCC Executive Director José E. López believes that ICE is just another chapter in our story. López said, "We must put our energy into asking ourselves the questions: What do we need to do? How do we confront this?"
I personally agree with José López. This is another chapter in our story and not just the story of Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park. It is also the story of this country, of all immigrants, indigenous people, and just about anyone who doesn't fit the cookie cutter image preferred by the present administration. But the administration is not the only author, we are cowriting this story. We have influence over the conclusion. And as Veronica Ocasio, Jessie Fuentes, and all the organizers and speakers at the many Palestinian marches and protests I attended have said, We are stronger together. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. Free Palestine. ICE OUT.
February 2, 2026.