Block Club Chicago: Ahmed Rehab At City Hall, Immigration Committee Chair Warns ‘Fascism Is Here,’ Sends Call To Investigate Feds To Council
The City Council on Thursday is expected to consider a resolution calling for an investigation of “every instance of potential misconduct” by federal agents in Chicago amid the immigration enforcement blitz.
By Alex V. Hernandez October 16, 2025
Left to right: Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council of American Islamic Relations’ Chicago branch; Vaughn Bryant, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives’ executive director; Geovanni Celaya, an organizer with Latino Union of Chicago. All three spoke during an Oct. 15, 2025 hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Credit: Alex V. Hernandez/Block Club Chicago
“We will not look away when migrants, refugees and asylees and others are hoarded off at gunpoint and persecuted in this great nation, echoing the terrors they sought refugee from,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council of American Islamic Relations’ Chicago branch, said at the meeting.
These actions by federal immigration agents are because Trump has sent an “army of under-qualified” and “undertrained” people who are acting like “bounty hunters” roving the Chicago area looking for “Brown people” to pick up, Rehab said.
Scenes from a standoff at 105th and Avenue N on Chicago's East Side between federal agents and residents on Oct. 14, 2025. Credit: Matthew Kaplan/Block Club Chicago
During Wednesday’s meeting, Rehab read a passage from “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank that he said was relevant to what Chicago is experiencing. That’s because — like Nazi Germany in the 1940s — the United States government is turning against its own people, he said.
“‘Terrible things are happening outside,'” Rehab said, quoting the famous diary. “‘Poor, helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.'”