Elizabeth Eccher started her delivery route at around 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday. This week, she has four stops. Many weeks, she has five or six.

Eccher, 69, who’s retired, has been volunteering with the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry since July, taking bags of food to homes in the community.

According to Katie Arko, the pantry’s executive director, demand for home deliveries has increased significantly in recent weeks — in part, she thinks, because residents are concerned about leaving their homes amid fears of federal immigration enforcement in the area.

Nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, Aurora-area food pantry leaders are saying the way individuals are seeking food from their organizations is changing.

Additionally, with uncertainty surrounding the future of SNAP benefits, Aurora-area food pantries are ramping up their delivery and take-home options, trying to recruit additional help and packing more food as immigration fears keep people at home, but demand for food continues to rise.

Eccher’s an early riser, and she normally comes in at around 8 a.m. on Wednesdays to help stock Aurora Area Interfaith’s shelves until it’s time to start her delivery route.

She delivers most Wednesdays, but says it rarely takes more than an hour. Recently, she’s been trying to help out on Fridays, too.

“Especially because I know that demand has increased for deliveries,” she explained.

Arko said 190 households are slated to get deliveries next week, up 45% from the week prior. And they’ve already received 82 new registrations for the following week. Currently, the pantry has about 38 to 42 volunteer drivers each week.

The pantry delivers food to individuals’ homes on Wednesdays and Fridays, in addition to the traditional in-person shopping it offers on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The delivery service is not new, Arko explained, but it was originally geared toward elderly residents who couldn’t drive. Aurora Area Interfaith doesn’t ask why pantry users are requesting food, but Arko said she’s been hearing about individuals using the delivery option because they’re afraid to go out in public.

Elizabeth Eccher picks up a cart of food from the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry for her deliveries in Aurora on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Mark Black/For The Beacon-News)

“There are some individuals and families who are concerned about parking and walking in public and being in a building for an extended period of time,” Arko said. “And, you know, that’s obviously because of ICE presence.”

Aurora is over 40% Hispanic, according to the most recent available U.S. Census numbers.

And the city’s been a subject of federal immigration enforcement actions in recent weeks, at locations like an elementary school and a grocery store.

In the past year, Aurora Area Interfaith also started offering a drive-up service on Fridays that allows individuals to take food home without going in to shop — another offering that’s been seeing higher numbers, she said.

Navigating to Aurora Area Interfaith’s website, users are prompted with a pop-up message in English and Spanish advertising the Friday drive-up service. The message advertises the service as “Quick. Easy. Contactless.”

Arko said that, once they’d ensured they had the volunteer numbers to serve them, the food pantry started promoting these offerings more.

“Because we know that people are desperate,” she said on Friday. “We truly made a decision to get food to people that are struggling because I think that their options are really limited right now.”

Demand is also rising at East Aurora School District 131, at which Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry distributes food to high school students on Thursdays after school.

As students filed out of East Aurora High School on Thursday afternoon, some had their hands full with plastic bags — one filled with nonperishables, another with frozen foods. A flyer on the door of the high school cafeteria advertises Thursdays as “Food Day,” offering free groceries for students to share with their families.

This week, they gave out all 375 bags they had packed, the food pantry’s Executive Director Annette Johnson, who also serves on East Aurora’s school board, said. Next Thursday, Johnson said, they’re hoping 425 bags will be enough.

The number of East Aurora students taking home food on Thursdays has increased significantly in the past year, said Rebecca Lewis, a data analyst for the district who volunteers with the food distributions.

Part of the increase, Johnson and Lewis said, came from the pantry giving out more desirable foods, and packing the groceries in more discreet bags.

But they’re also seeing students be “way more honest,” Lewis added, about how many people are in their family and asking for multiple bags to take home.

“Can you carry three bags?” Lewis recounted about her interactions with students. “Then take it.”

Last week, they ran out.

“We came downstairs and … we made another 20 bags, at least, because there were students waiting,” Lewis said. “They were willing to wait. Kids are willing to carry three bags home walking.”

Johnson thinks part of the reason for the uptick may be that families feel protected on school property amid the recent federal immigration crackdown. Earlier this past week, the district’s school board passed a resolution aiming to ban federal agents from district property, after a federal immigration enforcement-related incident at an elementary school prompted concern from district leadership.

“I still sincerely believe that people feel more safe with the schools,” Johnson said, noting that some people may not feel comfortable giving out their addresses or having people come to their homes to deliver food. “School districts have certainly done a lot of advertising that, ‘Hey, school is safe.’ And things like that.”

Lewis said immigration fears haven’t led to fewer students coming by for food.

“Even on days where we would expect to have low attendance, the kids are still coming down to get their food,” she said. “Even as all this stuff with ICE has been increasing.”

In addition to the high school distribution, the pantry also started a new initiative, explained Johnson, in which the pantry packs emergency boxes that are handed out at the district’s elementary and middle schools. They contain a variety of nonperishable foods, like rice, cereal and dried pasta.

“Parents are really, you know, they are afraid to go to the grocery store,” Johnson said. “This way we’re bringing it … right to the families.”

Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry in Aurora is also trying to set up an online portal, according to Johnson, that could in the future enable parents to select specific specific products via online ordering, rather than the packaged emergency boxes.

“We’re going to make it work,” Johnson said.

Increases in demand have not just been felt at Aurora pantries.

In nearby Woodridge, for example, West Suburban Community Pantry officials said they’re seeing a rise in individuals not showing up for their pantry shopping appointments. Pantry officials said 25 to 30 families have specifically said they’re reluctant to leave home to get food from the pantry.

The pantry, which says it serves 1,000 households weekly, is now considering additional delivery options to meet the demand.

According to Arko at Aurora Area Interfaith, in-person shopping dipped slightly in recent months, “when there was a real, credible threat of ICE coming to our city.” But it has since picked back up to the level they were at prior, she thinks because “like it or not, people have gotten used to it.” The pantry served around 17,000 individuals in October, she said.

She also thinks high food costs and fears surrounding a possible SNAP benefits lapse due to the federal government shutdown are part of the reason they’re seeing demand tick up.

“I think people are just trying to prepare a little bit,” she said.

High prices and economic frugality also mean less food recovered from grocery stores, Arko said. She noted that the pantry almost always has enough bread, for example, because it has a short shelf life at stores, but, in the past month or so, even that has been in short supply.

“I was just walking through the marketplace one morning as we were setting up for distribution, and I just looked at the volunteer who’s always in our bread area, I said, ‘Where’s all the bread?’” Arko recalled. “And her response was, ‘I don’t, I don’t know.’ It’s just not something we’ve ever been faced with.”

For Eccher, food is a family matter. Her brother, too, helps out at the pantry, she said. Another brother of hers, who lives out-of-state, also volunteers at food pantries. And, in her father’s obituary, the family requested donations for Aurora Area Interfaith in his memory.

Elizabeth Eccher knocks on the door of an Aurora apartment to see if the recipient is home as part of her volunteer work delivering food for the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Mark Black/For The Beacon-News)

Eccher’s parents immigrated to the United States, she explained as she made her deliveries on Wednesday, having grown up in Italy during World War II.

“We grew up with a real respect for food, for not wasting food, for being grateful for what we have,” she said of her upbringing.

It’s a fundamental need, she believes.

“If you are hungry, it’s so hard to do anything else,” Eccher said.

Now, though much remains to be seen about how continued federal immigration fears and uncertainty surrounding SNAP funding and eligibility will affect food pantry numbers, and how many deliveries volunteers like Eccher will be making in the coming weeks, Arko said Aurora Area Interfaith is getting ready. They have plans to send out their food recovery driver — who picks up the food the pantry ultimately gives out — to do deliveries if demand outpaces what volunteers can handle.

“I don’t think next week,” she said of recruiting their food recovery driver to help with delivery, “but if we continue to get the requests at the level that we are now, probably the following week.”

But only time will tell.

“We’re doing the best we can to make sure that people are getting enough food,” Arko said. “And if that means, you know, pivoting a little bit and, you know, expanding things and being creative, that’s what we’re doing.”

mmorrow@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/01/aurora-food-pantries-immigration-fears-snap-lapse/