<
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2026/02/13/chicago-resistance-ice-operation-midway-blitz-deportation-campaign-fugitive-slave-act>
"Jim Gray arrived in chains.
At the railroad station in Ottawa, Illinois, about 80 miles southwest of
Chicago.
Gray wore leg irons, his arms bound to his sides, and was led by a rope.
It was Oct. 19, 1859.
The month before he had escaped from slavery in New Madrid, Missouri. Caught by
an Illinois sheriff “in sympathy with the slave owners,” Gray was being
returned to bondage. A crowd awaited him, including a local merchant named John
Hossack, an immigrant from Scotland.
“What crime has he committed?” Hossack shouted. “Has he done anything but want
to be free?”
A question that echoes through the years and across the country today. With
federal immigration agents this past year prowling Democratic cities — Los
Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis — kidnapping Latino individuals and dragging them
off to exile, and billions being pumped into immigration enforcement, gearing
up to grab more people and confine them to enormous facilities now being
constructed nationwide, it’s impossible not to think of the
Fugitive Slave
Act, the 1850 law that also created a federal force tasked with snaring people
for the crime of wanting to live in freedom."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
