Erick Ignaczak received the call he was terminated at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the Chicago area’s biggest wild space, the day after Valentine’s Day while visiting his newborn nephew.
In his area, six people were terminated Saturday, part of President Donald Trump’s federal employee reduction.
“None of us who were let go had poor records,” he said. “We worked our asses off.”
In fact, Ignaczak said his reviews were so good he received bonuses, such as paid time off.
“There was no reason, we understood these terminations were coming for anyone on probation,” he said.
Ignaczak started as facility operations specialist, a unique job within the Forest Service, in January 2024. He worked at maintaining Midewin’s welcome center, supervisor’s office, horticulture building, machine shed and hotshot base.
He had a background in facilities and came from the East Coast to Chicago in 2007 to work in the field.
“There are appeals,” Ignaczak said. “We are all learning about them as we go along.”
He is signing up for two known class-action lawsuits.
“I do understand why this is: It is a simple action of tearing down the government facilities we have established,” he said. When facilities deteriorate, then this “beautiful project is to be eliminated.”
“They want to sell the forest [prairie] to private organizations to exploit,” he said. “Same thing is happening to the national parks. They are already discussing how to minimize the boundaries of the national parks.”
He said the script was already laid out in Project 2025.
“A lot of good people were let go, people who actually give a [crap] about the job,” he said.