A day after a major confrontation between Evanston community members and federal immigration agents at the intersection of Oakton Street and Asbury Avenue on Friday afternoon, three people detained at the scene have been released without charges, one of whom shared new details on the incident with the RoundTable.
Several residents described a car crash on Friday involving a U.S. Customs and Border Protection car and a red sedan around 12:20 p.m., which was followed by a confrontation between the agents, the sedan’s female driver and two bystanders.
Witness statements and videos posted to social media confirm that the agents detained three people and deployed pepper spray against a large crowd of residents. One agent pointed his weapon twice at people filming with their cellphones, the video shows.
Officers from the Evanston Police Department responded to the scene shortly after, and a news release from EPD late Friday explained that police “responded to reports from citizens and federal agents regarding a traffic crash in which a civilian vehicle rear-ended a federal vehicle. The crash led to a disturbance at the scene.”
A video taken at 12:20 p.m. Friday shows residents confronting federal agents after a vehicle crash at Oakton Street and Asbury Avenue. (Language advisory: In this and other videos featured in this story, obscenities have not been censored.)
After a community vigil held Saturday afternoon, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss told reporters that all three detainees were released. One of those three, Evanston resident Jennifer Moriarty, told the RoundTable in a phone interview that the agents took her to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Chicago field office, and she was ultimately released without any charges.
“They didn’t fingerprint me, they didn’t take any photographs of me, they didn’t read me any rights,” Moriarty said. “There was no arrest.”
City on alert
Gov. JB Pritzker had requested a federal pause in immigration enforcement operations in the area for the weekend so families could “spend Halloween weekend without fear.” The request was rejected by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and federal agents were active throughout Halloween in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.
Evanston was already on alert after widespread reports of immigration agents in the area Friday morning, including Border Patrol Commander-At-Large Gregory Bovino. At least one detainment was confirmed by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in the area of Oakton Street and Sherman Avenue around 9:30 a.m.
In addition, both District 65 and District 202 campuses were closed to outside visitors on Friday afternoon. However, the city’s Trunk or Treat at Robert Crown Community Center went ahead, and trick-or-treating hours were not adjusted, though the city urged caution.
‘A really rough arrest’
Andrew Wymer, an Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board member who witnessed the confrontation after Friday’s crash, told the RoundTable that after seeing “an entourage of five vehicles full of agents” at the ALDI supermarket on Oakton sometime around noon, a group of residents followed a federal vehicle in their cars and honked their horns to alert the neighborhood.
Other witnesses described the federal agents’ driving as “erratic.” As residents followed them, witnesses say the CBP vehicles drove through stop signs and red lights.
The U.S. Border Patrol car that Evanston residents followed was reportedly driving west on Oakton. Witnesses said agents tried to make a fast right turn onto Asbury Avenue during a red light, but had to brake to avoid hitting the car in front of them.
The driver of the red sedan, who was not part of the group following the agents, rear ended the federal vehicle. After the crash, CBP agents got out of their car and “extracted” the female driver of the red sedan, as Wymer put it.
“There was a really rough arrest, like it was an extended effort to arrest them, like it probably took five minutes, at least, to get them handcuffed,” Wymer said. “EPD got here, I don’t know the timeline, maybe three or four minutes after. Then the crowd came, and they [the CBP agents] eventually left.”
Videos reviewed by the RoundTable show that most of the federal authorities on the scene were agents with the Border Patrol. Agents were filmed shoving residents and using pepper spray against several of them, as a chorus of whistles rang out.
Two residents at the scene were also detained, including Moriarty, who said she heard whistles while driving near the intersection and got out to film with her phone. She didn’t hear the agents give any warnings to step back before one of them “turned around and just dropped me,” hard enough to knock one of her shoes off.
“When he tackled me to the ground, I lost a shoe, but it was right there when he stood me up,” Moriarty said. “And I said, ‘Can I just put my shoe on?’ And the guy actually picked it up and threw it.”
A video posted to social media shows an agent detaining the other bystander, a young man, punching him repeatedly in the face and dragging his face across the pavement after he had already been put in handcuffs.
Here’s a disturbing video from Evanston of a federal agent hitting a man on the ground as people yell that he can’t breathe.
— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt.bsky.social) October 31, 2025 at 3:22 PM
‘Step back or I’ll … shoot you’
One Evanston resident, Matthew, who asked that his real name not be used, said he biked over to the intersection of Oakton and Asbury after seeing a report that agents were in the area. He arrived after the crash but before EPD got to the scene. Matthew said he started filming when he saw a border patrol officer “forcibly putting a female into the back seat” of a federal vehicle.
“He [the agent] was being very violent with her. I said ‘You got to stop that,’ and he said, ‘Step back or I’ll [expletive] shoot you,‘” Matthew said. “I step back, and then I continue to record, at which point he turned around and pointed a gun at me.”
Video reviewed by the RoundTable and posted online showed an agent removed a pistol from his holster twice, once pointing it at Matthew.
By far the most disturbing ICE video I’ve seen from Evanston, IL today.
An ICE agent points his gun at unarmed citizens. Twice.
Then, he goes around the SUV, drops to his knees, and presses his full weight onto a man’s back. Moments later, that same man’s head is beaten into… pic.twitter.com/2TkiaP3R48
— Jesus Freakin Congress (@TheJFreakinC) October 31, 2025
Matthew said he stepped back again and the agent put his gun back in its holster, but “continued to be violent” and refused to answer Matthew’s requests to identify his name, badge number or supervisor. He added that he saw the young man the agents detained was “bleeding from the head. They were roughing him on the ground pretty good.”
Agents leave after EPD arrives
Additional video filmed by resident Jay Shefsky shows the crowd continuing to blow their whistles and heckle and film the agents, who attempted to corral bystanders surrounding their vehicle backward so they could exit the scene. The CBP vehicle moved north on Asbury shortly before EPD officers arrived and began attempting to clear the street.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss arrives on the scene at Oakton Street and Asbury Avenue. Asked about the Evanston Police Department response, he said: “I have a lot of concerns about this.” Credit: Richard Cahan
Biss arrived at the scene, citing resident safety. He was also in the street, and can be seen in video footage talking with police and pointing at a remaining federal vehicle.
As that vehicle pulled past an EPD vehicle before turning around and exiting west along Oakton, some residents shouted at the police, “who are you protecting here?”
Evanston police officers congregate at the intersection of Oakton Street and Asbury Avenue moments after ICE agents left the scene. Witnesses criticized the police for not taking action to stop the ICE agents from leaving the intersection. Credit: Richard Cahan
EPD Cmdr. Ryan Glew told the RoundTable that EPD’s role was to stabilize the scene, prevent further violence and prevent further apprehensions by federal agents.
In an interview with the RoundTable Friday afternoon, Biss said the city needs to “review everything” about how EPD handled the situation.
“It’s very dynamic, and it’s very important that they do a few things,” Biss said. “That they do everything they can to get identification from these guys, and that they not facilitate anything, that they not impede community members who are trying to keep their neighbors safe.”
At the community vigil held Saturday, Biss announced that EPD obtained a federal agent’s badge number from Friday’s confrontation and has started to “investigate the horrendous crimes that were perpetrated.” He later told reporters that the department is “weighing all options” and expects to make a decision on how to proceed Monday.
Feds drop detainees at Chicago FBI office
Moriarty said she and the other two detainees were in the same car when it left the scene, and that it was driven by the Border Patrol agent filmed aiming his weapon at residents. She said the agent drove them “all over the place” for several hours, crossing between Evanston and Rogers Park, and said that at multiple points he slammed on his brakes to try and cause another car to hit his vehicle.
“He jumped out of the car [and] ran to the car behind with his mace out, to try and mace these people — he did that on two occasions,” Moriarty said. “He did it a third time, and one of the other agents in the car said, ‘Do not get out of the car this time.’”
She added that the agent who was driving also threatened three different times to mace her and the other detainees — while he and the other agents were still in the same car as them.
“The level of incompetence is frightening to me, because it’s not just that they’re terrorizing the community … but they’re also unsafe to themselves,” Moriarty said. “They never frisked any of us before they put us in the car. I could reach into my pockets, which I was doing freely. It was nuts.”
After a long period of driving around and failing to find “a place that’s not hot” with residents blowing whistles, as Moriarty recalled an agent saying, she was separated from the other two detainees and placed in a different car. Both vehicles drove the detainees to a federal facility near downtown Chicago; based on her description of the area, this building appears to be the FBI field office at 2111 W. Roosevelt Road.
Moriarty said Border Patrol agents handed her over to a group of FBI agents, who told her she wasn’t under arrest and was only being detained. “So the FBI talked for a little bit, left me there, came back a while later and said, ‘OK, you can go,’” she said.
“This is nothing but a violation of my rights. I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been assaulted,“ Moriarty said. “This is what frightens me the most, is that these people are so incompetent.”
After exiting the facility, she said she walked, still missing a shoe, all the way to the Ogilvie Transportation Center to take a train back to Evanston, declining a friend’s offer to pick her up since she “need[ed] to process” what happened to her. While she was detained, community members organized to secure her car and pick her son up from school.
One of her biggest takeaways, she said, is how “afraid” the agents were of community members spotting them and alerting their neighbors with whistles and horns.
“People are clocking them in the vehicles, one horn goes off, and then boom, whistles are out,” Moriarty said. “It’s inspiring to see, actually, because too many people are not doing anything, and that’s how we got here.”
If you have any information about this incident, other detainments on Friday, or any other tips, please email the RoundTable staff at tips@evanstonroundtable.com or breakingnews@evanstonroundtable.com for live events.
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