In November 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials raided the Chicago Pallet Company in Elk Grove Village, near northwest Chicago. Despite ICE officials’ claims that the raid was part of an investigation into money laundering by company officials, they entered the company warehouse and arrested 34 workers who did not hold executive positions, including some who did not speak any English. All 34 were entered into deportation proceedings. Members and officials from churches and immigrant rights organizations, including Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Mission and Centro Sin Fronteras (now called La Familia Latina Unida/Sin Fronteras) organized a rally after the arrest to release the 34 members of the raid from immigration detention and prevent their immediate deportation. Almost half of those arrested are fathers or grandfathers with families in the U.S. which would be destroyed if they were deported. On one hand, it was a relief when immigration detention bond was a...

June 10, 2013 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin In the summer of 1986, newlyweds Karen and Dyke Rhoads were found stabbed to death after a crime that climaxed with the bodies and their Paris, Ill., home being destroyed by fire. As one of the many courts that eventually reviewed this murder case and its subsequent prosecution noted, "From the ashes of these gruesome murders rises another, deeply disturbing allegation: That police and a prosecutor conspired to frame two innocent men of these crimes and over the course of the next two decades, state officials continued to cover up those misdeeds."