Chicago-Area Community College Tried to Cancel Flock Contract to Protect Illegal Aliens

Elgin Community College reportedly tried to cancel its Flock Safety contract out of concern for illegal immigrant students, but was unable to after the company refused.

In April of 2025, the Chicago-area school installed six Flock cameras to “enhance the safety and security of students,” according to a report by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Several months later, in September 2025, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained an illegal immigrant student in a campus parking lot. This prompted college administrators to wonder if Flock had been sharing the school’s data with ICE.

Staff at the community college in Elgin, Illinois, then audited the Flock data on campus — and found no evidence that it had been accessed by federal immigration agents. Nonetheless, college officials asked the company to remove the cameras anyway, “out of an abundance of caution,” Elgin Community College President Peggy Heinrich said.

In October 2025, the school reached out to Flock, informing the surveillance company they wanted to cancel their contract and uninstall the camera equipment. Within one day, however, Flock refused the school’s request, insisting it had not violated its contract, Heinrich said.

Given that Flock retains ownership of its equipment and only the company’s staff can take its cameras down, removing such surveillance from Elgin’s campus was not as simple as it may seem.

So the college reportedly reached out to Flock again in December 2025, this time offering to pay for the remaining five months of the contract even if the cameras are taken down. In return, Elgin Community College officials were met with silence.

“We never received a response back from Flock,” Heinrich said.

From there, school administrators tried taking matters into their own hands by covering the surveillance cameras with trash bags and zip ties.

However, Flock staff would later pull up in unmarked vehicles and repeatedly remove the coverings, Heinrich told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“We were kind of in a back and forth for a bit where we’d cover, and then when they’d come to service, they’d remove,” the Elgin president said.

This continued until until April of this year, when Elgin Community College’s contract with Flock expired and the cameras were eventually uninstalled by the company.