Inside Trump’s ICE Raids—with the MAGA Mom Fighting Back

When I met Aleah Arundale outside her home in Chicago a few weeks ago, she greeted me dressed in a sequined American flag skirt and a sweatshirt with “USA” printed on the front.

Arundale is the type of person who is hard to fit in a box. She’s loud and boisterous, and not just in her fashion choices. She’ll tell you she voted for Donald Trump in the last election because she felt the left had gone too far on social issues impacting her two young kids. She’ll also tell you she agreed with Trump’s pledge to shut down the border and stop the flow of illegal migrants coming into America.

But even as immigration has become perhaps the most charged issue in our politics over the last decade, Arundale has dedicated the last three years of her life to assisting Venezuelan migrant families settle in Chicago—helping them file for asylum, get out of the shelters, find work, food, schooling, and anything else they may need to begin building a life in America. And now, as the Trump administration has brought its crackdown on illegal immigration to her hometown, Arundale is fighting for the people who became her friends but are now being rounded up, detained, and deported.

She calls their treatment “America’s broken promise.”

After my colleague Tanya Lukyanova and I reported on Arundale and her neighbors, we came back to the newsroom with a surprising tale about the people on the front lines of maybe the most contentious fight in America right now. Watch our short documentary, and read our story on the woman who says “you can love this country and still try to make it better.”

—Frannie Block