Grantees in Action

Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) ongoing work to expand sanctuary to protect immigrants and US born people of color, particularly those who are targeted by local police reached a critical milestone this spring as the Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG) substantiated their claims that the Chicago Police Department’s gang database is riddled with errors and has caused irreparable harm to predominantly Black and Latinx community members.

The OIG’s report concluded that 95% (134,242) of people in the gang database are Black or Latinx and over 15,000 do not have a gang designation. The report also substantiated fears that multiple institutions including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and possibly Chicago Public Schools have access to the database. Organizers have long linked series of ICE raids in neighborhoods like Back of the Yards, to information gathered by CPD, and have questioned CPS about their role in providing information for the database.

OCAD leads the Erase the Database campaign in collaboration with BYP100, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, and other local and national groups. Erase the Database was catalyzed out of OCAD’s  long-standing work to address the criminalization and over-policing of Black, Latinx, poor, and other communities of color in the criminal justice and immigration systems and prisons and detention centers.

Last June, Erase the Database coalition filed a Federal Class Action lawsuit against the City of Chicago and Chicago Police Department (CPD), targeting CPD’s unconstitutional Gang Database, and urging City Council to take action. The suit was filed on behalf of four individual plaintiffs, three Black and one Latino. Each plaintiff was falsely identified as a gang member and has since been subjected to irreparable harm and harassment because of the wrongful designation.

OCAD has also served as the convener of the Chicago Immigration Policy Working Group that succeeded in passing amendments to Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance and continues to advocate for the elimination of exceptions that allow for the Chicago Police Department to work with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They are known for their work organizing high-profile campaigns to stop individual deportations, and their use of direct action, grassroots organizing, and policy and legal strategy to defend immigrant and US born communities of color.

Find out more about the coalition at http://erasethedatabase.com/ and follow OCAD’s work at http://organizedcommunities.org/.