The influx of immigrants to new destinations in the US have produced a variegated landscape of immigration enforcement at the local level. The dissertation focuses on Waukegan as a place through the lens of some of the most vulnerable residents. It asks the following questions: what is the relationship between the growing presence of immigrants and the local government's approach to economic development? How do immigrants navigate the sub/urban space and make place? This dissertation employed participant observation, semi-structured qualitative interviews, and archival research to answer these questions. Participants are primarily undocumented residents, people part of families with members who have different citizenship and migratory statuses, migrants, and Latina/o/xs. It argues that contemporary conditions of racism and capitalism are not natural but are actively constructed through space and time. A historical framework accounts for previous iterations of displacement, dispossession, and exclusion towards racialized Others as the city benefited from industrial growth, with Latinxs being the contemporary group targeted with violence. This approach additionally reveals how residents have to demand for environmental justice due to the legacy of industrial pollution and contemporary sources of exposure to toxicity. Their navigations reveals that, for some, the state is a site of contestation and struggle in their efforts towards an equitable environment. Residents, then, power-map these state relations and have shared this knowledge with others in Waukegan. Lastly, Latinx migrants develop practices to circumvent or alleviate the various barriers that they face in the area. Undocumented residents who are low-income, women, and queer creatively craft practices to navigate the various forms of violence within Waukegan, including expanding the terrain for mobility and organizing outside of the city and towards others in the region. In conclusion, since residents share and distribute the knowledge they produce with others, future work can support migrants by developing projects that are public-facing and bring awareness to community members about issues that affect them and their livelihoods.