By Jennifer Flores, Reyna Valencia, and Bella Bercan
The Dominican Star has launched an ICE Tracker in order to keep the community aware of ICE activity in the surrounding areas.
During the Illinois College Press Association (ICPA) conference, the Dominican Star staff had the opportunity to attend several informational sessions about journalism given by other Illinois colleges.
One of the sessions included information on an ICE Tracking site that had been developed by the Editor-in-Chief, Lilli Malone, and Managing Editor, Julia Pentasuglio, for The Loyola Phoenix. They focused on tracking ICE activity in the Rogers Park and Edgewater area.
We became inspired by their initiative and decided to create our own addition to service the Dominican University community. After having a meeting with Malone and Pentasuglio, we gathered more information to make this launch possible.
These developments have led to us creating our own map with pinned locations where there has been confirmed ICE activity. The ICE Tracker will include areas that are around Dominican and that have a large commuter student population.
The specific neighborhoods we will cover are River Forest, Forest Park, Elmwood Park, River Grove, Maywood, Melrose Park, Oak Park, Dunning, Broadview, Stone Park, Belmont Cragin, Franklin Park, Northlake, Westchester, and Cicero.
If you see any ICE activity that occurs in any of these areas, you can submit a report to our social media and email. Each submission should include photos or videos (from a safe distance), location, time, number of agents, and vehicle license plates if possible.
We will gather these reports and verify the information before pinning the locations on the map. Besides including submitted reports, we have also joined community Facebook groups that are active in providing public information on ICE sightings. We will regularly scan through posts and verify information that can also be added to the map.
As of now, there have been some pins added to the map that reflect ICE activity that has occurred over the last couple of days. To view the map, visit the Dominican Star website.
It is important to note that the sightings may not be reflected immediately, but we will put effort into updating information as promptly as possible. If attempting to gather photo and video evidence in the presence of ICE, we encourage Dominican Students and other community members to approach the situation cautiously.
Report to:
Instagram: Dominican Star
Facebook: Dominican Star Email: domstarnews@gmail.com
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