About 70 people gathered in Downtown Oak Park over the weekend to protest AT&T’s contracts with ICE, Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security.
The protest staged outside the AT&T store at 425 N. Harlem Ave. in Oak Park was organized by the congregation at Unity Temple, one of 20 Unitarian Universalist congregations in Illinois which organized protests of the telecom giant on Sunday, Nov. 16. The protest was meant to draw attention to the “hypocrisy” of AT&T’s contracts with the DHS to provide information technology and network support to ICE, according to protest organizer Anne White.
“It was to bring attention to anyone who drove by, to the possible customers, to citizens, to normal people that AT&T has a multimillion, multi-year contract with ICE, and it is their communication equipment that is one of the main underpinnings of communication for ICE and the Border Patrol,” White said. “AT&T has been around since 1876, profiting off of the American trust. They’re the reason ICE can communicate, that needs to be broadcast to the country.
AT&T has several high dollar contracts with the DHS, including a deal it signed in 2021 with the agency that could end up paying out more $160 million by 2032. Earlier this year AT&T signed another $11.3 million deal to provide data-analytics services to ICE and a $14 million deal to provide network services support to U.S. Border Patrol, according to federal financial records.
The corporation is valued at over $300 billion.
Protestors had ICE’s impact in Oak Park at front of mind, White said.
ICE agents reportedly detained four people in Oak Park the week before on Saturday, Nov. 8, according to local immigrants’ rights group PASO West Suburban. Hundreds of Chicagoland residents have been arrested by ICE and Border Patrol over the course of President Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz civil immigration enforcement effort, leading to regular protests, court challenges and allegations that the arrests have amounted to a pattern of civil rights violations.
“I think it was a response from people who were so angry and upset over what happened in little Oak Park the weekend before,” White said. “I call it being on high alert. We’re all on high alert for what’s going on in Chicagoland and in our own community.”
“My heart absolutely breaks when I think about the children who do not know where their mother or their father or both are, because they’ve been swept away, zip tied and disappeared, and I just cannot imagine what is going what, what will result from this in the long term for little children.”
White said that Unity Temple congregation members will be involved in continued demonstrations against ICE, Border Patrol and AT&T, relying on the sound of their voices and the whistles some have started carrying to blow during ICE sightings.
“Here’s this enormous telecom communication company, and just think of the power they have,” White said. “And what do we have? Little plastic whistles.”
“We have these little whistles but look at what they’re doing. Yeah, the power of people with whistles. That alone is a beautiful story.”