West Chicago Elementary School District 33 officials are responding to reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on Monday near schools and surrounding West Chicago neighborhoods.

District 33 Superintendent Kristina Davis said the “secondhand reports” indicated people have been detained.

“We were only hearing rumors,” Davis said about noon Monday, nearly five hours after first being notified of ICE activity.

“We have not verified any of that,” she said. “But at this point in terms of who or how many people, we have heard that there have been some people detained, but we have not been given any names or verification of who that might be, at this time.”

West Chicago Police and City of West Chicago representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Davis said West Chicago residents and state Sen. Karina Villa informed the district about what they believed to be an ICE presence in neighborhoods.

Villa posted live on Facebook Monday morning at Route 59 and Forest Avenue, stating she’d received reports of “ICE coming” and said she had seen unidentified “masked individuals.”

She was filmed in front of a suburban utility vehicle with lights flashing and a South Dakota license plate. She warned residents to stay inside their homes and not to answer the door without a warrant to do so.

Davis said District 33 executed a “secure-in-teach” for its buildings, which encompass five elementary schools, a middle school and a preschool.

The secure-in-teach, she said, “means that we just do extra monitoring of people in and out of our buildings.”

Davis said the first report of an ICE sighting she had received came at about 7:30 a.m. in the neighborhood around Route 59 and Lester Street, which is about four blocks east of Leman Middle School.

She said that since the secure-in-teach was activated, “we have not received any more reports of activity in the area and we’re just monitoring the situation.”

At around noon, Davis said the activation was still in effect “for the time being,” she said, calling the events “unsettling for many.”

“We’re right now monitoring … and trying to learn more, but we’ve heard what sounds to be verified reports, yes, of people being detained,” she said.

“We just don’t know who. And we don’t know how that impacts our children, our students, that’s what we’re waiting to hear,” Davis said.

“These are all reports that we’re getting, secondhand, that there have been people detained. We don’t know where, we don’t know who they are, and like I said, our main concern is our students and how that might impact them.”

https://www.dailyherald.com/20250915/news/ice-activity-reported-in-west-chicago/