Storming an apartment complex from the ground and the air as families slept. Deploying chemical agents near a public school. Handcuffing a Chicago City Council member at a hospital.
More than 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since an immigration crackdown started last month in the Chicago area, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration has also said it will deploy National Guard troops in its agenda to deport criminals and reduce crime.
But U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status have been among those temporarily detained in encounters popping up daily across neighborhoods in the city of 2.7 million and its many suburbs, based on accounts from witnesses and those detained.
Activists, residents and some city leaders have alleged tactics used by federal immigration agents sparked violence and fueled neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest city.
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday on CNN. “They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”
Arriving by helicopter
Activists and residents were taking stock Sunday at an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side where the Department of Homeland Security said 37 immigrants were arrested recently in an operation that’s raised calls for investigation by Pritzker.
While federal agents have mostly focused on immigrant-heavy and Latino enclaves, the operation early Tuesday unfolded in the largely Black South Shore neighborhood that’s had a small influx of migrants resettled in Chicago while seeking asylum.
Agents can be seen in video released by the Department of Homeland Security using unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building.
“In the dead of night and seemingly for the cameras, armed federal agents emerged from the Black Hawk helicopters rappelling onto the roof of that apartment building,” Pritzker said Monday.
Residents, city leaders and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which canvassed the area, said some were zip tied in restraint, including children and U.S. citizens.
“When they came in the middle of the night, they terrorized the families that were living there. There were children who were without clothing, they were zip tied, taken outside at 3 o’clock in the morning. A senior resident, an American citizen with no warrants, was taken outside and handcuffed for three hours,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said during a news conference Monday. “Doors were blown off their hinges, walls were broken through, immigration agents coming from Black Hawk helicopters … This is America.”
NBC 5 Investigates learned at least two U.S. citizens were among those temporarily detained as federal agents surrounded the building near 75th Street and South Shore Avenue, according to video posted on the Citizen App and news footage.
Isaiah Johnson, who said he lives in the building, said he was placed in plastic zip-tie handcuffs and detained for nearly two hours.
He said he told agents that he was a U.S. citizen and that an agent took his photo and ran his personal information before he was released.
“Once I went into the hallway, it was a bunch of people in green and they were like ‘lay down, you have to go to the front.’ They made everybody go to front, and they put us in the plastic wristband thingies, and they just took our information,” said Isaiah Johnson, a Chicago native who said he was detained on the sidewalk near the building.
Dixon Romero with Southside Together, an organization that’s also been helping residents, said doors were knocked off the hinges.
“Everyone we talked to didn’t feel safe,” he said. “This is not normal. It’s not OK. It’s not right.”
Pritzker, a two-term Democrat, directed state agencies to investigate claims that children were zip tied and detained separately from their parents, saying “military-style tactics” shouldn’t be used on children. Several Democratic members of the Illinois congressional delegation met near the site Sunday, calling for an end to immigration raids.
DHS officials said they were targeting connections to the Tren de Aragua gang. Without offering details on arrests or addressing how children were treated, DHS said “some of the targeted subjects are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday posted heavily edited video clips of the operation to X showing agents blasting through doors, helicopters and adults in zip ties, but music played over most of the roughly 1 minute video.
Agency officials did not return a message left Sunday.
“They sent a clear message to all Chicagoans. They said, we do not respect your rights. We can do anything we want, and we will film it and put it on social media,” Johnson said.
Pritzker called out the social media footage posted from the raid.
“Even though it was supposedly a very dangerous and important mission, they brought dozens of cameras and set them up so that they could film their attack on the building in HD for social media,” he said.
Tear gas and smoke bombs
The use of chemical agents has become more visible in the past week, expanding from being largely used to manage protesters, agents used it this week on city streets and during immigration operations, according to ICIRR and video footage.
Activists said agents threw a cannister of a chemical near a school in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood. The activity in the Northwest Side neighborhood prompted nearby Funston Elementary School to hold recess indoors.
The scene was captured on video from witnesses.
“On Friday, agents dispersed tear gas in the middle of a busy city street. Chicagoans were hit with chemical agents while walking their children home from school. A couple ran from tear gas with a 2-year-old child in their care,” Johnson told reporters Monday.
The same day Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes said they were placed in handcuffs at a hospital. Fuentes said they asked agents to show a warrant for a person who’d broken his leg while chased by ICE agents who then transported him to the emergency room.
“ICE acted like an invading army in our neighborhoods,” said state Rep. Lilian Jiménez, a Democrat. “Helicopters hovered above our homes, terrifying families and disturbing the peace of our community. These shameful and lawless actions are not only a violation of constitutional rights but of our most basic liberty: the right to live free from persecution and fear.”
Immigration agents shot a woman they allege was armed and tried to run them over after agents were “boxed in by 10 cars.” She and another person were charged Sunday with forcibly assaulting, impeding and interfering with a federal law enforcement officer.
Noem has defended the aggressive tactics, calling the mission treacherous to agents and alleging threats on officers’ lives.
“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” she said Sunday on the “Fox & Friends” weekend show.
Chicago’s top cop stressed that anyone boxing in law enforcement officers with vehicles or ramming vehicles with agents inside them is “breaking the law.”
“You are breaking the law when you do that and you are putting yourself in danger … It’s also reasonable for them to believe that you’re eventually going to do harm to them. If you ram any vehicle, especially one that contains law enforcement agents – and that’s any law enforcement, local, state, federal, county – and you do this intentionally, this is considered deadly force. Deadly force is anything that can cause great bodily harm or death,” CPD Supt. Larry Snelling said. “When you plow into a vehicle that contains law enforcement agents, you’re using deadly force and they can use deadly force in response to stop you. We need to be clear about these laws. We cannot become a society where we just decide to take everything in our own hands and start to commit crimes against law enforcement.”
Going to court
On Monday, Johnson signed an executive order to create what he called “ICE-free zones,” aimed at limiting where federal agents can gather in the city for immigration enforcement activities.
The order, which took effect immediately, will prohibit federal immigration authorities from using “city-owned or controlled parking lots, vacant lots, and garages as staging areas, processing locations, or operations bases for civil immigration enforcement activities,” it states.
Illinois has also filed a lawsuit aiming to block the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops to Chicago.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare the Trump administration’s federalization and deployment “unconstitutional and/or unlawful” saying it violated the Administrative Procedures Act, a law governing how federal agencies develop and issue regulations, and “is contrary to the Constitution of the United States.”
In a statement, a White House spokesperson said President Donald Trump “has exercised his lawful authority.”
Judge April Perry has scheduled a hearing for 2 p.m. CT Monday in federal court in Chicago.
Leaders of a Chicago suburb that’s home to an immigration processing center have also taken their fight against federal agents to court.
The village of Broadview has become a front line in the immigration operation. The center in the community of 8,000 people is where immigrants are processed for detention or deportation.
Protests outside have become tense with near daily arrests. Civil rights organizations have blasted aggressive tactics by agents, while village officials have launched three separate criminal investigations against federal agents.
City officials have demanded the federal government remove an 8-foot fence they say was “illegally” put up outside the facility. They filed a federal lawsuit Friday seek a temporary restraining order and the immediate removal of the fence they say blocks fire access.
“The fence also constitutes an immediate public safety hazard,” the lawsuit said.
Also pending is an expected ruling on alleged violations of a 2022 consent decree on how federal immigration agents can make arrests in six states including Illinois. While the order expired in May, attorneys have sought an extension and filed dozens of more alleged violations in the past month.
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