Gary Airport Serves As Hub To Deport Immigrant Detainees

Gary/Chicago International Airport
The Gary-Chicago International Airport is a public airport located three miles northwest of Gary, Indiana, United States. Ken Lund / Flickr
Gary/Chicago International Airport
The Gary-Chicago International Airport is a public airport located three miles northwest of Gary, Indiana, United States. Ken Lund / Flickr

Gary Airport Serves As Hub To Deport Immigrant Detainees

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.

For years, Ruth Needleman has tracked the buses that arrive weekly at the Gary-Chicago International Airport. Shackled immigrant detainees shuffle off and are later flown, usually to the Mexican border, and released.

A group of community leaders from the Gary-Chicago region have called for an interfaith vigil at the airport on Friday, April 7th, 2017 to protest the ongoing deportations. 

Needleman, a professor emerita of Labor Studies at Indiana University and a long-time Gary resident, joins us to chronicle the actions at Gary Airport. She’s also joined by JoAnn Persch, a Sister of Mercy nun and co-founder of The Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants. Persch works with adults detained at immigrant detention centers awaiting court dates. She also works in children’s houses for unaccompanied immigrant minors.