Dozens of concerned Quad Cities residents filled St. Anthony’s Catholic Church Parish Hall, in downtown Davenport, for a Saturday morning meeting on how to prepare and respond to potential ICE activity in the area.
Several cities in the U.S. (including Minneapolis, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles) have seen massive protests and confrontations with agents from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE).
Saturday’s meeting was organized by Iowa State Rep. Ken Croken, featuring guest speaker Jessie Fuentes, member of the Chicago City Council.
During the morning meeting, a man shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday died, local and federal officials said, the second fatal shooting involving federal agents this month during a surge in immigration enforcement in the Minnesota city.
The man, identified as 37-year-old Alex Pretti, according to the AP, was armed with a handgun and two magazines, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. An unarmed U.S. citizen, Renee Nicole Good, was fatally shot Jan. 7 by an ICE agent as she tried to drive away in a Minneapolis neighborhood during ICE activity.
A video circulating on social media and aired on cable news stations Saturday (Jan. 24) showed people wearing masks and tactical vests wrestling with a man on a snow-covered street before shots are heard. In the video, the man falls to the ground, and several more shots are heard.
Pretti, an American citizen, a resident of the city, is a legal gun owner with a permit to carry, Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the man was armed with a handgun, that a struggle ensued as agents tried to subdue him and that an agent “fired defensive shots.” The agency said agents were in the area on a targeted immigration enforcement operation.
Fuentes, a Puerto Rican U.S. citizen, represents a primarily Latino district in northwest Chicago (the 26th Ward).
“As an elected official, it is my moral obligation to represent every single one of my constituents, despite their immigrant status,” she said Saturday in Davenport. “Preparedness is what keeps people safe in the city of Chicago under the Operation Midway Blitz. And many of you all may have seen some of what is a grim reality on your local news channel or on national TV of the torture, the trauma and the crime that we have seen on behalf of ICE agents and Border Patrol.
“In the beginning of Operation Midway Blitz, it started with ICE agents who were coming in and racially profiling Latinos all over the city of Chicago. We were watching parents being picked up on their way of dropping children off to school. We were watching commercial corridors in Latino neighborhoods be tear gassed and people be shot with pepper bullets.”
“We've watched individuals who have gone through the legal process to become documented during temporary visas and be picked up in their court hearings for going through the process the right way, the way this government has asked people to do,” Fuentes said.
“We've had watched U.S. citizens be detained, beaten and tortured and released 48 to 72 hours later from our processing center. This is not picking up the worst of the worst,” she said. “In fact, 80% of the individuals who are being picked up have no criminal record.” On Oct. 3, 2025, Fuentes was detained by federal immigration authorities at a Humboldt Park hospital after she questioned if the officers had a judicial warrant for arresting a man they were holding at the facility.
Video shows Ald. Fuentes asking two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers if they have a signed judicial warrant for a man they detained earlier and was holding at Humboldt Park Health because the man broke his leg while being chased by ICE officers.
One officer is seen forcefully grabbing Fuentes’ arms and placing them behind her back before handcuffing her.
“We do not need a warrant,” both officers say in the video as they hold Fuentes, who repeatedly asks them if they have a signed warrant.
The officers escorted Fuentes out of the hospital and were ready to place her into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle, she said.
She then asked the officers, “What did I do wrong? Outside of asking you if you have a signed judicial warrant, I want you to articulate to me what law did I break?” at which point they removed the handcuffs from Fuentes and let her go.
“After the incident in the emergency room of Humboldt Park Health, I think it raised some serious alarms, not just for hospitals in the city of Chicago, but for hospitals across the country,” she said at St. Anthony’s Saturday. "Front-line staff at hospitals need to be trained to ask for a signed judicial warrant if ICE agents come in.'
“Hospitals are sensitive locations and we need to do everything possible to protect sensitive locations. We don't want federal agents to be in our emergency room,” Fuentes said, noting federal HIPAA laws protect patients’ rights to privacy.
“No agent, no law enforcement, has the right to be in an emergency room in any place where people are receiving care because they have the right to their privacy,” she said. “So it's upon the leadership of the hospital to be training all of their staff, physicians, nurses, folks in the emergency room, temporary technicians, security officers, people at the front desk, to be protecting people's privacy while they're receiving medical care.”
Not deporting the “worst of the worst”
Croken said that President Trump campaigned on deporting “the worst of the worst” – murderers, rapists, and child predators. But ICE actions clearly have gone after non-violent immigrants with no criminal records.
“So let's be clear. We're not against the idea of deportation of the worst of the worst,” Croken said. “We're against what we have gotten in its place.” He invited Fuentes to speak in Davenport about her experiences and how Chicago has dealt with ICE.
“I have no secret knowledge that this is coming to Davenport. I have no reason to believe near term it's going to happen,” Croken said. “I do believe it will happen, but I'm not preparing us for something imminent. I believe that out of abundance of prudence and precaution, we need to think about how we'll do this, how we'll manage this while preserving our legal rights as Americans and our human rights, the dignity we all deserve.”
Regardless of immigration status, everyone has the right to an attorney and the right not to open their door without signed judicial warrants, Fuentes said.
“We knew very early that knowledge would be the thing that would dissipate fear in our community. Because fear thrives in silence when individuals don't know their rights or organizations to turn to or maybe local churches that they can be safe in,” she said. “When you are fearful, you make mistakes like opening the door to your home and someone knocks on it without a signed judicial warrant or talking about your legal status to an ICE agent because you're rambling out of fear without knowing your rights.'
“And so we worked really hard across the city of Chicago to organize events like the one that we're having here today called Know Your Rights campaigns,” Fuentes said. “And what started as one turned into dozens across the city of Chicago so that we were educating thousands of individuals who would then turn into what we are calling rapid respondents.'
“And rapid responders have one simple job. When there is ICE activity in the community, they are letting [the] community know,” she said. “And then when they are there, they are documenting the atrocities that we are seeing being conducted by ICE agents so that our collective of lawyers and justice organizations can file those lawsuits in court.”
She recommended people seeking citizenship have strong attorneys, and seek help of their Congressional representatives.
Fuentes noted the Illinois municipalities in the Quad Cities (such as Moline and Rock Island) are protected under state law, the Illinois Trust Act, to keep the entire state safe.
“They're protected by the sensitive locations legislation that our state legislature just passed in its last session,” she said. “Sensitive locations have policies and procedures in place in which they cannot let federal agents in. And that also came out of ICE agents going into a daycare and pulling a staff member out and detaining her in the city of Chicago. And so those cities are protected by state law in the state of Illinois, despite those municipalities not having welcoming state or city ordinance, they have to abide by the Illinois Trust Act.”
Chicago and other cities have passed laws that allow local law enforcement and city agencies to not cooperate with ICE agents in immigration enforcement, Fuentes said.
“According to our welcoming city ordinance, they cannot cooperate,” she said. “If there are signed judicial warrants, we abide by those, because we follow federal law. But for any activity outside of a signed judicial warrant, our agencies cannot cooperate.”
Fuentes is introducing an amendment to a COPA ordinance (for police accountability), in which COPA is to investigate and hold any local law enforcement accountable that cooperates with ICE.
Iowa is not a sanctuary state and has no official sanctuary cities. Local resolutions in cities like Ames and Iowa City support community safety but do not formally declare sanctuary status.
State law (Iowa Code Chapter 27A) requires full cooperation with federal immigration authorities, limiting local discretion and effectively preventing sanctuary policies.
Ensuring Iowa is safe
Rep. Croken has introduced a bill that ensures Iowa safe places where apprehension and detention cannot occur, such as hospitals, schools, churches and courthouses.
“I don't know that the bill has legs to make it through the GOP-controlled General assembly, but there is no current state law that would prevent that,” he said.
“We need to continue to exercise our constitutional rights. Just because there are agents that seek to break them doesn't mean we stop exercising them,” Fuentes said. “The second we stop exercising them, then the Constitution is null and void. And so we must continue to utilize our rights every single day. And so I would recommend that we continue to lean on our religious spaces and that the leaders of those religious spaces continue to take strong stances in exercising their constitutional rights.”
“It is important to us and we need to be reflecting our community,” Iowa State Sen. Cindy Winckler said of the potential for Iowa cities to pass “welcoming city” ordinances. “If our community wants that, we should move forward and not be afraid that the state will tell us no, or slap our hands. Davenport has one of those opportunities – we are a charter city, which means we were a city before Iowa was a state, so there is some independence in that, and we shouldn’t be afraid to exercise it.”
Illinois has an organization called the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and there should be a similar one in Iowa, Fuentes noted. Churches and schools can act as informal sanctuaries where people can feel safe.
“So I truly believe that today is a great start for how you build networks to keep people safe,” she said. “Now, what we're seeing in Minneapolis is a clear escalation of ICE and Border Patrol activity across the United States. What happened to Ms. Good shouldn't have happened. And we have to prepare our communities to engage in rapid response and do our best to keep ourselves safe.'
“In my personal opinion, I don't believe that Ms. Good had an interaction that should have caused that fatal incident,” she added. “But there are ways that we can continue to keep ourselves safe. Documenting from a distance, making sure that you're making community aware, making sure that you are continuously in your communication networks and that when rapid responders show up, that they are clearly communicating and that they are disseminating the information as quick as possible.'
“What we are looking at in the city of Chicago is the role of vehicles. Now, with the incident that happened with Ms. Good, are rapid responders safer on foot than they are in vehicles?” Fuentes said. “And these are things that I ask you all to monitor all the time. Rapid response is always changing based on the behavior of federal agents in your city. And it doesn't look the same in every single city.”
“Immigrants are a part of the very fabric of our city. They are a part of our economy. They are a part of our educational system,” she said. “They help build, lead and carry institutions. Immigrants are not the problem. We do not have an immigration system that is just, fair and accessible, and we must continue to fight for that.'
“That's why who's in elected office matters. It's why we should always be pressing on what people are doing,” Fuentes said. “And we should be calling our congressional representatives in.”
There were no QC area Congressional representatives at Saturday’s meeting.
Training rapid responders
It’s important to train rapid responders, to document (record by video) and properly report incidents so that we are ensuring that neighbors are safe, Fuentes noted.
“Now, churches like St. Anthony play a pivotal role in having robust rapid response teams so that we can always let communities know,” she said of QC churches, noting it’s also important people carry and use whistles so they can let others know when they see ICE activity.
“Knowing when someone is picked up and being able to document who was picked up and from where allows justice organizations and lawyers to be able to properly track that individual in the system as they're going through,” Fuentes said. “Without that, it is very easy for individuals to get lost in the system without proper tracking and for families to feel that it's extremely difficult to ever be able to see that relative again.'
“We've watched individuals from Chicago not be deported back to their native countries, but be deported to countries that they've never been to,” she said. “People from Mexico or Venezuela being deported to Ecuador are being deported to other countries in which they have no family or no way to getting back home. And so it's extremely important that when people are taken from our community that we can document who that person is when they were taken so that attorneys can properly utilize that information to track those individuals so that we can bring that family back together.'
“And I think that's extremely important because it's not just about preventing deportation while we try our best to do that. It's about ensuring that individuals are safe in that process, as safe as we can make it, and that they have proper representation,” Fuentes added.
Responders also should be trained to be able to tell ICE agents from local law enforcement and other kinds of federal law enforcement (like FBI or ATF).
“Knowledge, transparency and fact is what allows us to be the most prepared so that we're not creating chaos and fear,” Fuentes said. “In the city of Chicago, which is very different than the city of Davenport and the state of Iowa, is that we have welcoming city and sanctuary policies. There's a local legislation that allows law enforcement and city officials not to cooperate with federal deportation enforcement, which helps keeps us safe.”
“If you know an immigrant family, it's important that there is a family preparedness plan,” she said, noting if that parent is taken, who is picking up the children from school? Who's going to have temporary custody while organizations and attorneys are able to resolve the deportation and detainment itself? Who takes care of an elder if a child of an elder is taken?'
“Who has the mutual aid networks to make sure that is a financial person who has taken? Who helps with the rent and the groceries?” Fuentes asked. “Is there a six-month plan to keep our families safe, taken care of and fed? Those are the things that your community should be thinking about and how we are able to do that. And what is an organization in Davenport or in the Quad Cities that can be the center organization that helps collect the data, disseminate the data and have these quarterly or monthly meetings that allow you all to understand the activities that are taking place in your city?”
Allison Ambrose, co-facilitator of the Immigration Coalition of the Quad Cities (formed before the 2024 election), attended Saturday’s meeting. Her group is made up of community leaders and concerned citizens of various organizations, including Progressive Action for the Common Good.
She had a table with information on resources for local immigrants. A flyer said if you witness ICE activity, hear a rumor about ICE activity, or have a loved one arrested by ICE, you can call 515-505-8805.
There is a QC rapid response team (which has an e-mail group and Signal chat) of about 140 people.
“I think a big thing will be to try to inform community members, to go out with a whistle,” Ambrose said. “Like in Minneapolis, people just see it. If they see it on the street, they come out. Now, I don't think our neighborhoods are as diverse as they are in Minneapolis.”
“Something we want to work on is informing the public. When you see this, go out in solidarity,” she said. “We’re kind of in unknown waters. These false alarms kind of create chaos.'
Gloria Mancilla, vice president of Quad Cities Interfaith, is part of the rapid response team that did training last year. She recommended checking the site https://knowyourrights.us, which has good information about responding to ICE at work or home.
Fuentes said future administrations should look at prosecutions of ICE agents for violating people’s rights.
“In good conscience, a future administration can and should prosecute ICE agents who have conducted some of these operations that we have seen, particularly in Chicago, Louisiana, and Minneapolis,” Fuentes said. “We still have some more time, and the House just passed an additional $25 billion to give to ICE. So we can expect some escalation in the near future.”
Croken said a similar informational meeting will be scheduled in the next month or two.
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