More than a dozen people were taken into custody by federal immigration agents Monday in raids near a west suburban police station and a Chicago courthouse, according to a state lawmaker and court officials.
State Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, said her office received reports that immigration agents would be out across DuPage County early in the morning, and she spotted about nine agents in the West Chicago Police Department parking lot.
They left after Villa confronted them, but she followed their unmarked vehicle until they met up with another set of agents staged in a residential area, according to Villa.
Unconfirmed reports compiled by community activists and Villa suggested as many as 16 people were taken into custody, including a minor, in separate raids across the majority-Latino suburb. Arrests were reported near a school, an apartment building and a grocery store.
A video posted to social media shows masked agents getting into an SUV and driving off as Villa again confronts them and urges residents to go inside.
“Allies came out immediately and we chased them out of town,” Villa said in a phone interview. “It’s horrific. Families and students are being stigmatized because of the color of their skin. We’re going to do everything we can to protect our neighbors.”
Federal agents were also spotted around courthouses in Chicago on Monday.
Two people were arrested by agents around noon outside a West Side county courthouse, at 3150 W Flournoy St., according to the Cook County Public Defender’s Office.
Hours earlier, an employee with the public defenders’ office also saw five or six federal agents outside the county’s domestic violence courthouse, at 555 W. Harrison St.
Chicago police were dispatched to the scene after someone reported a person in plainclothes, sitting in an unmarked vehicle with “an assault-style rifle,” according to the public defender’s office. The Chicago Police Department confirmed they were called to reports of a person with a gun and determined it was “ a member of another law enforcement agency.”
The public defender’s office said Chicago police told their employee that the armed person was a federal agent, but would not say what agency they worked for. The agents did not appear to make any arrests, the public defender’s office said.
Hours later, the agents returned to the domestic violence courthouse, this time in vehicles marked ICE, but again left quickly without arrests, the office said.
Federal officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the arrests.
President Donald Trump has promised enhanced immigration enforcement around Chicago throughout the month to target “the worst of the worst” alleged criminals, though the Sun-Times has found that some of the “Operation Midway Blitz” arrests touted by the White House have happened outside Illinois.
Speaking at a Loop press conference, Gov. JB Pritzker said “ICE has been gathering its agents. It has taken them longer than I think they anticipated… [but] I expect that they now have more people on the ground that will effectuate their plans to an even greater degree.”
Leaders in Democratic-controlled Illinois have largely denounced the influx of federal agents for sparking terror in communities where many people may lack legal status but pay taxes and pose no public safety threat.
“People are fearful of masked men in unmarked vans who could grab them on a street corner because of how they look or how they sound,” Pritzker said. “People are scared to go to work. They’re scared to take their kids to school.”
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