ICE raids and immigration crackdowns loom large as national gathering of Hispanic journalists begins in Chicago

Yunuen Bonaparte is a regular at NAHJ national conferences. She has a routine. Knows what documents to pack and, as a DACA recipient, expects that traveling might come with some snags.

Still, this year felt different.

Bonaparte, the art director for palabra. who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. when she was 12 with her two brothers and her parents, laid plans for more than just the week she would spend in Chicago — or the subsequent trip to L.A. to visit family.

She prepared for almost a month of additional time away, just in case she got detained.

Bonaparte made extra copies of the key to her Brooklyn apartment and left it with a friend. A precaution, she said, but one that amid recent immigration raids in big cities, including in Chicago, doesn’t feel unreasonable.

“I have my plan A to my plan Z,” she said. “I don’t think anything bad is going to happen, but if it does happen, I have a plan. That’s the point.”

Heightened anxieties over immigration crackdowns and growing threats to press freedom in the U.S. cast a long shadow as an estimated 1,500 Latinos gathered to attend the 41st National Association of Hispanic Journalists annual conference that began Wednesday. While many NAHJ members said they came to find solidarity and support among their peers, several said they could not shake the worries and what-ifs that followed them to the Windy City.

“Nobody’s safe,” said Martin Alfaro, head of Alfaro Media Consulting firm. “I don’t know how many people will attend the conference, but we could be targets at any moment, simply because we exist and because of the way we look. It’s unfortunate that we’re living through this moment right now.”

Alfaro, who serves as president of the NAHJ Philadelphia chapter, said he has heard from several Latino journalists who feel the same way he does: unsure of how — or if — they can focus on work when threats to immigrants feel so personal.

Dunia Elvir, the national NAHJ board president, said during a Tuesday news conference that while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers could “go anywhere,” NAHJ did not put any extra precautions in place for the 2025 national conference. She added that NAHJ officials “did check with the hotel” and “talked to them about security,” but “if something happens, you know, how much control do we have of anything happening in the first place?”

ICE cannot legally make arrests at private properties without a judicial warrant, though there are some exceptions. Spaces within a private property that are publicly accessible, such as the lobby of the Hilton Chicago, can be legally accessed by federal agents.

To enter private spaces beyond that, like hotel rooms or conference spaces that require a registration badge, agents would need to produce a judicial warrant.

“The reality is they’re federal agents. They can go anywhere,” Elvir said. “The place that we are [in], it’s a private place, it’s not like they can come and march in this room — but they can if they want to. So what I can say is, like, know your rights, be aware.”

On Tuesday afternoon, agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security descended on the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture — about six miles from the hotel where the conference was taking place and the site of a planned Thursday NAHJ reception. Though agents did not make any arrests, the action sounded alarms throughout the Latino community in Chicago, and at the conference.

Even non-immigrants who are attending this year’s conference said they have found themselves worrying about the potential threats to their fellow conference-goers.

Longtime business journalist Robert Barba said he has empathy for NAHJ members of all statuses.

“We have DREAMer NAHJ members, we have green-card NAHJ members, we have first-generation NAHJ members,” he said. “I would imagine they are feeling this in a very specific way.”

Barba, who first attended the conference as a college student in 2003, said he returns year after year to network with journalists from around the country who are “doing interesting work” he wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to meet. But conferences, he said, tend to “reflect” the political climate in which they take place.

Several panels and workshops scheduled for the 2025 conference focused on the risks associated with immigration coverage and threats to press freedom.

ProPublica reporter Melissa Sanchez, who covers immigration and labor issues, described feeling “whiplash” in her efforts to keep up with the volume and speed with which the Trump administration has announced new directives in its unprecedented pursuit of immigrants. That has made it difficult, Sanchez said, to report on these policies in a way that “feels meaningful.”

“You can spend a lot of time focusing on one piece of it, but while you’ve been working on one story about one little piece of it, about a hundred other things have happened that are equally as intense or different,” she said. “That makes it hard to feel like what you did with this one little itty-bitty fraction is going to have an impact when so many other things have been changed.”

On June 9, NAHJ was one of two dozen groups to sign a letter sent by three press freedom organizations to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem addressing the potential violation of press freedoms and the mistreatment of journalists during recent Los Angeles immigration protests.

But Elvir told The Latino Reporter the week before the conference kicked off that “not even one” member had reached out to the board about being afraid to attend this year because of personal concerns regarding their immigration status or current political climate.

Brian De Los Santos, a DACA recipient and L.A-based journalist who mainly covers community and culture, said he has been nervous to travel, though his absence at this year’s NAHJ conference is not because of his immigration status.

De Los Santos said he frequently feels surveilled and worries about what information airlines and airports share with the federal government. As a longtime NAHJ member, he said, he has wanted to see more direct action from the NAHJ board this year.

During his tenure on the board, in 2017 and 2018, he said the group tried to engage the White House directly during President Trump’s first term on issues of free speech and press protections.

“If we really want to consider ourselves an organization that fundamentally wants to help Latino journalists, let’s do it now,” De Los Santos said. “We need the help right now.”

Bonaparte said the location of this year’s conference weighed heavily on her decision to attend. As an immigrant with a work visa contingent on protections provided by the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, Bonaparte said, her immigration status sometimes feels “flimsy.”

“If you told me that we’d have to go down to South Texas, I would not have come,” she said.

Looking ahead, Bonaparte said, the organization should prioritize providing legal and mental health resources to its members. 

“Community is what kept me in this industry for so long,” Bonaparte said. “The way we survive a Trump administration is together.”

Luisana Ortiz is an incoming senior at Syracuse University pursuing a dual degree in journalism and data analytics. She aspires to one day write profiles and cover underrepresented communties for The New Yorker. Reach her at luisanasofiawork [at] outlook [dot] com.