Residents of Oak Park gathered on the Home Avenue pedestrian bridge Wednesday morning in response to two fatal shootings this past week by ICE agents in Maine and Texas. They held their signs through nearly 90-degree heat, drawing waves and honks from drivers on Interstate 290, below the bridge.
On the morning of Monday, July 15, ICE agents shot and killed 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerroro during an operation in Biddeford, Maine. Less than a week earlier, an ICE agent shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.
“I’m just heartbroken by people getting murdered by ICE,” said protester Meghan Stromberg, holding a sign that read “Hold ICE Accountable.”
Protesters, including Stromberg, held or tied their signs and posters to the chain link fence on the bridge overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway.
“Those people are noticing, the people driving by are honking,” Stromberg said, motioning to the drivers below. “It matters that people are standing up and saying, ‘this isn’t right.’”
Protesters began to gather just before 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. Plans for the gathering were posted to the Activate Oak Park Facebook page on Monday evening. This was the second protest at the Home Avenue bridge in the past week: five days earlier, protesters met in response to the killing of Salgado Arujo.
Scott Sakiyama is an Oak Park attorney who has been an active protestor against ICE in the village and beyond.
In fall 2025, ICE activity in Oak Park resulted in a number of arrests, culminating in the Oak Park village board passing an ordinance declaring the village an “ICE free zone.” That fall, federal agents arrested Sakiyama outside his child’s elementary school and charged him with impeding federal agents. By January, those charges had been dismissed.
Additionally, Sakiyama told Wednesday Journal that ICE took another Oak Park resident into custody yesterday.
“I was filming it,” Sakiyama said. “They chased after one of the observers.”
“It feels present; it feels like it could happen here,” protester Magali Dietz said.
Claire Battle, another protester, said ICE agents took someone into custody during an operation at her neighbor’s house last fall.
“If you went to the alley outside of my house, you’d see where my neighbor’s gate is still broken down from where ICE trampled through their yard,” Battle said.
But Battle says she would be protesting even if her community had not seen ICE activity.
“Even if it wasn’t affecting us, we have to stand up for others,” Battle said.
Peter Bender, who said he has come out for six protests since the killing of Alex Preiti Minnesota in January, said ICE activity is compounded by “everything else going on,” such as the ongoing war in Iran.
Mary Bird, another protester, said she has cared about immigration for a long time, having worked as the director of public service for a law school.
“We had immigrant students, we had students who worked in the field,” Bird said. Knowing DACA students, as well as having family members who came from immigrant backgrounds, motivated her decision to protest ICE activity, Bird said.
Protester Sarah Slackert brought up the killing of Guerrero in Maine, who was reportedly killed in front of his three-year-old daughter, according to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.
“I have a three-year-old right now, she sits in the car seat right behind me” said Slackert, whose daughter helped her create her sign.
“If we don’t stop it from happening in any community now, then it’s going to keep continuing, and it’s going to get worse and worse, and they’re going to come for you as well soon,” said Slackert.