Just before noon on Friday, Abbey Nystedt was busy on a Zoom call at her Lakeview home when she heard the shriek of whistles, now an understood warning in Chicago that immigration agents were nearby.
Federal agents had just pulled up on a quiet block of multimillion-dollar houses a short walk from Wrigley Field, sending a four-man construction crew working in the front yard of one home scrambling to escape.
Dozens of neighbors poured outside of their homes, shocked and confronting the agents. After a chaotic back-and-forth, neighbors said the agents released tear gas without warning, sending people choking for air and rinsing their eyes out with water from garden hoses.
“People were coming out of their homes to record, to yell, to tell ICE to leave our neighborhood — it was a whole bunch of people with their freaking goldendoodles,” said Ms. Nystedt, who works in the hospitality industry, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “What am I going to do, go back to my Zoom call when people across the street are being denied their constitutional rights?”
Federal immigration operations are now penetrating nearly every corner of Chicago, and many residents are responding with anger.
This week, agents have released tear gas, made arrests and interrogated people on the streets of Little Village and the Southwest Side, areas that are heavily populated with Latino families and some undocumented immigrants. But the federal crackdown on illegal immigration that began more than six weeks ago has also started to play out in some of Chicago’s quiet suburbs and most expensive neighborhoods.
On Friday, the North Side was stunned by a wave of arrests and the use of chemical agents in predominantly white, wealthy communities not far from Lake Michigan, including Lincoln Park and Lakeview.
“It’s disrupting daily life for essentially everybody in the city, not just immigrant workers or people who are undocumented,” said Kevin Eberhardt, who owns a North Side home where workers were sought by the Border Patrol. “It’s affecting people in an affluent neighborhood like the one I live in.”
Mr. Eberhardt spoke to The New York Times by phone from Toronto, where he was boarding a plane to return to Chicago. He said he was devastated by what his neighbors told him had happened in front of his home on Friday.
Mr. Eberhardt, who hired a company that employed the workers and said he did not know their immigration status, said they had been at his house for three weeks, replacing windows and siding on the three-flat building.
Video footage from his doorbell camera showed the moment that a white S.U.V. carrying federal agents pulled up in front of the house.
The workers scattered while agents climbed over the front fence. The agents detained one man, while the other three workers ran off, Mr. Eberhardt said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the arrest or about the confrontation with residents that followed. It was uncertain whether agents were pursuing particular individuals in the Lakeview neighborhood.
Residents of the block confronted the agents, shouting and telling them to leave the neighborhood, as motorists nearby honked their horns.
“Terrorists!” yelled one man. “Shame on you!” one woman shouted.
Ms. Nystedt said she joined in, finding herself outraged at what was happening.
“We’re told by the government that these guys are criminals and rapists and thugs,” she said. “This guy was just working a construction job, putting siding on a house.”
Halley Felty, a venue manager who lives nearby, was walking back from Starbucks when she saw the crowd gathered, chanting, “Let him go!”
The agents climbed into cars and drove in reverse down the street as residents continued to follow on foot, capturing cellphone video, blowing whistles and yelling. Suddenly, the street was engulfed with tear gas.
“They threw tear gas at us even though they could have just left,” Ms. Felty said, standing across the street from the house. “I heard no warnings. I was really surprised, honestly, because nobody was physically attacking their cars. They were just angry citizens yelling at them.”
Hours later, Ms. Felty said that her eyes and skin were still irritated from the chemicals that agents deployed, and that her emotions have been running high.
“I feel like my brain has been buffering ever since this happened,” she said. “It’s a quiet, idyllic neighborhood, the perfect place to live, and then we have federal agents throwing tear gas and abducting people.”
The use of tear gas by federal agents on crowds that have gathered as arrests are made has been an ongoing point of debate since the federal immigration crackdown began. Earlier this month, a federal judge issued an order banning agents from using tear gas on groups without warnings, though the order allowed exceptions.
On Friday, the judge, Sara L. Ellis of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, ordered Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who has been leading operations in Chicago, to appear before her in court on Tuesday. The judge’s two-sentence order provided no further explanation. Mr. Bovino was involved in a confrontation with residents in Little Village this week.
Given the uptick in arrests, some school officials have urged the Chicago Public Schools to offer remote learning to students, a move that Mayor Brandon Johnson said on Friday should be considered.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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