Federal immigration agents blanketed Chicago’s North, Northwest and Near West sides Friday, making immigration arrests in neighborhoods that haven’t been targeted as often as others in the past six weeks of President Donald Trump’s aggressive “Operation Midway Blitz” deportation campaign.
Feds smashed one man’s car window outside a family health center where his pregnant partner had an appointment.
Other agents grabbed two construction workers from a house and tear-gassed neighbors on the residential block.
Agents took two men from outside a comedy club. They disrupted a children’s Halloween event. One group grabbed a rideshare driver arriving to pick someone up.
“It was terrifying,” said Autumn Brown, 22, whose apartment windows overlook the Erie Family Health Center in West Town, which provides community resources and a daycare.
That’s where a group of agents in camouflage gear approached a man in his car Friday morning, broke his window and dragged him out. Bystanders said his partner, who is 8 months pregnant, was inside the center. She could be heard yelling that she’s pregnant on videos posted to social media.
“Especially with a daycare, I just keep thinking about the kids and how they had to witness that,” Brown said. “I saw a couple of children at the windows.”
Neighbors and members of a rapid response group were quickly outside blowing whistles to alert the community, trying to stop the agents from taking the man, asking them to produce a warrant and yelling “you can’t do this,” witnesses said.
Kevin Davis, a spokesman for Erie Family Health Centers, said there was a “violent interaction with ICE agents outside here with a member of our community.” Davis said he couldn’t confirm any details about a patient receiving care at the center.
“It’s jarring for members of the community for something like this to happen right here,” Davis said. “We want to make sure, especially as tenants in the community, that the community members feel safe.”
State Rep. Lillian Jimenez said outside the health center that the detention of the soon-to-be father was “unacceptable.”
“This is the definition of kidnapping,” Jimenez said.
Community Facebook groups were full of reports of sightings all morning in West Town, Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park.
Around the same time as the health center arrest, agents grabbed a man from another car. A woman standing on the sidewalk with her suitcase said he was her rideshare driver who had just arrived to pick her up.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lake View arrest
About four miles north, in the 3300 block of North Lakewood Avenue in Lake View, two vehicles full of federal agents pulled up to a house where four construction workers were sitting on the front porch having lunch.
The Border Patrol agents went inside the home’s fence to grab the workers, who tried to flee to safety. Two managed to find refuge inside, but the other two were arrested.
One of the workers, a 37-year-old man who did not share his name out of fear for his safety, told the Chicago Sun-Times his nephew, Eladio Monter de Muñoz, was caught by agents as he tried to hide in the garage but couldn’t manage to shut the door in time.
The uncle made it safely inside, but he suffered multiple cuts and puncture wounds on both arms and hands when he jumped over the fence trying to get away from federal officers.
“There isn’t much I can do about what happened,” he said as he tried to control the bleeding on his arm. “I just want to make sure my nephew and my coworker are OK.
When asked what he would do moving forward, the man responded, “Go back to work. I have no other option. We just have to try and be careful.”
After the raid, their uneaten lunches remained on the porch and on the sidewalk while the two remaining men went back to work.
Similar to the scene outside the health center, a few dozen neighbors quickly gathered outside and shouted at agents who were arresting the men, demanding to see a warrant. The agents moved down the street and threw at least two tear gas canisters, scattering the crowd. Witnesses said they didn’t hear a warning before the gas was deployed.
“They’re not obstructing the vehicles, they’re not jumping on the cars, nobody has weapons,” Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th) said. “They’re using their First Amendment rights to use their voices, and tear gas was deployed, without warning, in violation of every order that has been issued.”
Vicky Mavreas, who lives down the block from the house where the workers were targeted, said she heard rapid responders’ familiar whistles and went outside.
“I saw multiple cars surrounding the house,” Mavreas said. “The ICE agents were behind the fence. I saw one take his elbow and knock the man who was working that they kidnapped to the ground to detain him.”
The crowd of neighbors followed the agents’ SUVs as they pulled away with the workers.
“When they threw two tear-gasses, there was no violence going on. There was no aggression,” Mavreas said. “People were asking where their warrants were. People asked for the man’s name. And this one ICE agent was screaming ‘f— you’ back at this guy, a civilian that was just fighting for this man to have his rights be upheld.”
About seven minutes had passed from the time neighbors approached the scene at the house to the tear gas being deployed about a block away.
Tear gas lingered in the air more than an hour later on the otherwise quiet residential block, and an empty canister was by a curb in the street. About two blocks away on Southport Avenue, people seemed unaware of the federal activity while they dined on restaurant patios.
Lawson said this is the first time his office has received these types of confirmed reports of arrests in his ward.
Contributing: Ashlee Rezin, Anthony Vazquez