Protesters at Gary/Chicago International Airport
Protesters claim another deportation flight halted at Gary Airport
Contributed By:The 411 News
Buses carrying illegal immigrants don't arrive; flights don't leave for the border
Yet again, deportation protesters have stopped a flight from leaving the Gary/Chicago International Airport with illegal immigrants the U.S. is transporting to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Holding “Keep Families Together” and “Abolish ICE” signs and banners, activists gathered Friday morning at the Gary Airport. The airport is used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency as its Midwest transportation hub to fly illegal immigrants to the border.
But the bus didn’t come, said Ruth Needleman, organizer for NWI Resistance, the group vowing to end deportation flights in Gary. “They were diverted to O’Hare Airport because of the protests in Gary.”
Needleman said she informed Duane Hayden, the airport’s director on Tuesday about Friday’s protest. “He thanked me. Later that day I received a message from him that there wouldn’t be a flight from Gary on Friday.”
Needleman said she learned that buses did leave the detention center in Kankakee on Friday. “Those buses come from Kankakee every Friday to Gary; instead they went to O’Hare in Chicago. It’s a pattern and it also happened at our last demonstration in May.”
Northwest Indiana has not been kind to ICE policies. Gary, Hobart, and Elkhart have rejected the building of immigrant detention centers.
In 2017, the city of Gary passed a “welcoming city” ordinance that forbids the collection of immigration status information “in the course of ordinary business, including law enforcement.”
Story Posted:07/08/2018
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