CHICAGO — For nearly 16 years, María Irma Pérez Padilla set up her tamale cart at a busy intersection in Pilsen, selling the beloved Mexican dish to help support her family. The 52-year-old mother worked long days to pay for her diabetes medication and provide for her children after her husband’s death two years ago.

Like many older immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission, Pérez relied entirely on street vending to survive. But on a Friday morning in October, masked federal agents in an unmarked vehicle detained her as she prepared an order of tamales. Within minutes, the familiar presence who anchored the corner for more than a decade was gone.

“They were just standing between her and her cart — they didn’t even let her finish her job,” her son, Jaime Montano, said. Despite having no criminal record, Pérez was taken to a detention center.

She is one of at least 15 vendors immigration authorities have detained from Chicago’s streets since the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz in September, according to the Street Vendors Association of Chicago and immigrant rights groups. While the operation was promoted as an effort to target people with violent criminal records who didn’t have legal status, the families of detained vendors say most have no such history.

As longtime vendors quietly disappear from the corners they’ve held for years, community organizations and neighbors are scrambling to support those taken, their families and those still working on the streets. A new local effort has emerged to provide financial assistance, helping vendors avoid working outdoors under fear of arrest or to ensure someone else can temporarily run their stands.

The Street Vendors Association of Chicago launched a fundraiser last month to collect donations now being distributed to vendors who apply for emergency support. Maria Orozco of SVAC said the campaign gained momentum following Tribune reporting that highlighted the toll ICE raids have taken on street vendors citywide.

Street vendors are uniquely vulnerable because of the public nature of their work, Orozco said. The fear generated by recent raids has forced many to forgo the income they rely on to sustain their families and small businesses.

For Montano, community support made the difference. Donations collected through a GoFundMe allowed him to hire an attorney, who secured his mother’s release a week after her arrest. He drove to Indiana, near the Kentucky border, to bring her home.

For now, Pérez remains inside their apartment. She has a court date later this month that will begin a long legal process. She hasn’t stepped outdoors since returning, though she keeps a printed copy of her judge-ordered release by her side in case agents approach her again.

The family has lived in Pilsen for more than two decades, and Pérez’s sudden disappearance shook the community. Montano, who once split household expenses with his mother, said she was always determined not to burden him.

“She said she was here to work, so she wanted to get out there and do her job,” Montano said.

That determination was shared by many of the detained vendors, their families say. Most continued working despite warnings that agents were nearby, believing the raids would focus on “the worst of the worst.” Instead, many vendors were questioned about their birthplace and nationality and detained without explanation, a practice community leaders say has become routine since Border Patrol arrived in Chicago.

“We aren’t the criminals they said they would target,” Laura Murillo told her fiance, Jaime Perez, before masked agents arrested her at her tamale stand in Back of the Yards. Even after hearing “la migra” was close, she kept working the morning of Sept. 25.

After Murillo’s arrest, the community rallied. Neighbors, friends and family helped keep her stand open, selling tamales to support her legal defense and her three children. Murillo, who has run her business for nearly 20 years, is now being held in a Texas detention center as she awaits a court date.

“We are fighting her deportation because she is not a criminal, she is a business owner that has paid more taxes than some people, and an exemplary mother,” Perez said.

Every morning, he sets up in the same spot where she was taken. He sells tamales to help keep Murillo’s eldest daughter in college and to ensure her youngest, who has autism, continues receiving care.

Across the city, similar scenes are unfolding. On the North Side, just days before Pérez Padilla’s arrest, another tamale vendor was taken from her corner at Belmont and Kimball.

Since then, Francelia Lagunas, a close family friend, has stepped in to run the cart. A few yards away, “Abolish ICE” was spray-painted in large white letters across a brick wall, a stark reminder of the tense atmosphere.

The business owner who makes the tamales sent someone with legal status to recover the cart and try to learn what happened. Bystanders later told Laguna’s sister that masked agents arrived about 9 a.m., grabbed the vendor by the hand and forced her into a van. The woman did not speak.

On a recent Tuesday, Lagunas worked from 6 a.m. to noon, hoping sales would help the tamalera’s daughter as she tries to understand what comes next. According to a rapid response volunteer in contact with the family, the vendor is being held in a Texas detention center while awaiting deportation to Peru.

Sometimes, family or friends make it to the scene in time to save a vendor’s belongings. Other times, carts, coolers and fresh produce are left behind.

After agents detained Edwin Andres Quinones at his fruit stand under the bridge at Cicero Avenue and I-55, they left behind crates of bananas, oranges and mangos. His family only learned of his arrest after he stopped answering his phone and a video of his abandoned stand circulated online.

Quinones had been selling fruit for more than six months while waiting for his work permit and asylum case, his wife said. Now, as he sits in a Texas detention center awaiting deportation to Venezuela, she and their child struggle to buy groceries and pay rent. She also has an ongoing asylum case and has not left her home since enforcement ramped up, fearing their child might be left alone.

In Berwyn and Cicero, a neighborhood watch group is raising money to help the family, but finances are tight, and uncertainty grows as the holidays approach. Like the Quinones family, many others now face the compounded burden of lost income and the urgent need to hire an attorney.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has been contacted sporadically by families of detained street vendors, said Brandon Lee, the organization’s communications director. Some need financial help. Others are navigating the legal system. Nearly all are desperate for answers.

“These are folks who are community staples, who interact with their neighbors every single day, their presence is part of the vibrancy of so many neighborhoods,” Lee said. “What’s happening to street vendors is just one of the many examples of the cruelty and disregard, the disdain, that ICE has for our immigrant communities.”

Meanwhile, Orozco and other volunteers hope they can provide support as the holidays near — especially amid expectations that Border Patrol and ICE enforcement will continue.

In Little Village, many corners once filled with vendors selling elotes, fruit, vegetables, empanadas, snacks, and eggs now sit empty. Some vendors were swept up during enforcement sweeps; others remained indoors.

“But eventually, they have to eat,” said Elizeth Arguelles, a community organizer, street vendor advocate, and SVAC member. Arguelles is helping build a volunteer network to take over vendor shifts or accompany vendors throughout the day, offering support and monitoring for suspicious activity.

SVAC’s GoFundMe, which set a goal of $300,000, reached its target Nov. 5 — and donations continue to come in. As of Friday, 979 vendors have applied for a $500 emergency check. Orozco said that in the first week of accepting applications, a line stretched out the door of their office.

Orozco hand-delivered the first 160 checks last week and is waiting to receive 800 more checks to resume distribution. The group prioritized elderly applicants and will continue to distribute based on need, including medical conditions, lack of food or medicine, and households where the vendor is the sole earner.

“My parents are street vendors and I don’t allow my mom to go out right now,” Orozco said. “It’s a tough choice because when you’re a street vendor, you get an income basically daily. It gets very depressing when there is nothing coming in.”

Other grassroots groups are organizing “buy-outs” so vendors can earn money without staying outside for long periods. Neighbors are pooling money to bulk-purchase tamales, elotes and candy to reduce vendors’ exposure to enforcement.

On the Monday after Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino said on X that agents would be returning to Little Village; the Edgeville Community Rapid Response Team launched what they called a “tamale train.”

“We (suggested to our community) that if we raised $1,000, we could buy out four vendors immediately,” said Quinn Michaelis, a member of the Edgewater/Andersonville group. “Within a half hour, we had $1,300.”

At 6:30 the next morning, a volunteer in Little Village bought out as many vendors as they could find and distributed half the tamales to protesters gathered near the 26th Street Arch. Michaelis brought the remaining tamales back to Edgewater for their community. The group bought out vendors again the following day.

“It was such a wonderful, uplifting way for us all to get involved in a very real way,” Michaelis added.

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