CHICAGO — The first thing that hit Sarah Parise was an unfamiliar, pungent smell.
She looked down at her ginger-haired 2-year-old, Leia, who was taking a turn pushing her own stroller near a grassy field where they had stopped to play on a Saturday morning walk.
Then, it kicked in.
“All of a sudden, my eyes were just burning and I couldn’t breathe,” Parise said.
Leia began to scream: “Mommy! Mommy! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”
Parise quickly put Leia in her stroller. She ran as fast as she could down the wide streets of her Old Irving Park neighborhood, past the towering trees with their leaves full of fall color. As she struggled with her own breathing, Leia wailed in pain and terror.
As Parise raced home, she heard whistles and cars honking, she said. She saw a blur of armed men dressed in fatigues. Multiple reports from that day, Oct. 25, detailed how Border Patrol agents conducting immigration enforcement in the neighborhood confronted residents, leading a federal judge to question an official in court over the use of tear gas there “without any warning.”
Nearly a week later, with a lingering sting in her throat, Parise recounted to NBC News the fear she and her daughter experienced as a result.
Parise and more than a half-dozen neighbors underscored in interviews that federal agents have been the catalyst for chaos and clashes. They said that despite President Donald Trump’s depiction of Chicago as a “war zone,” the biggest disturbance or encounter with violence that they have witnessed in their neighborhood was not from criminals — but when immigration agents swept through.
“I didn’t know what happens when a 2-year-old — they’re so little and their little lungs and everything — get tear gas in them? And it’s on you?” Parise said. “I didn’t see a ton of what was going on, because my only thing in my mind was like, ‘I have to get home, and we have to get this rinsed off.’”
That day, Parise said, she blew through her front door as her husband stared on, startled. She shouted “We just got hit with tear gas!” and headed to the bathroom, where she rinsed her daughter repeatedly, then herself, with water. When that didn’t work, she said, she doused them with milk.
Parise showed a selfie she snapped of herself that day, wrapped in a towel, eyes red with tears, face scrunched in pain.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that the actions in Old Irving Park resulted in the arrest of one “criminal illegal alien from Mexico, who has previously been arrested for assault.” She added, in part, “To safely clear the area after multiple warnings and the crowd continuing to advance on them, Border Patrol had to deploy crowd control measures.”
As Parise worries over her 2-year-old suffering from the effects of a chemical agent deployed by immigration officers, several Chicagoans expressed fears that tumultuous deportation efforts could upend their lives and potentially put children in danger. The immigration crackdown known as “Operation Midway Blitz has fanned out across Chicago and its suburbs since September. Asked in a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday whether violent encounters involving immigration agents had gone too far, Trump said: “They haven’t gone far enough.”
McLaughlin added in her statement: “Our officers are facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, abusers, and gang members. Secretary Noem’s message to the rioters is clear: you will not stop us or slow us down.”
Parise and her daughter are among a growing number of people who say they have inadvertently been exposed to chemical agents or witnessed troubling scenes by immigration agents. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officers have increasingly gone into neighborhoods — including in Rogers Park, Little Village, Lakeview, Albany Park and Belmont Cragin — targeting people for arrest while they were selling tamales, attending church, or doing landscape or construction work.
Area residents, education leaders, activists, local elected officials and federal judges have decried agents’ actions in residential areas as overly aggressive and, at times, dangerous. This led to a federal judge issuing a temporary restraining order Oct. 9 to curb officers from using aggressive tactics, including tear gas, when they are not under imminent threat.
In Broadview, outside an immigration detention facility, residents have complained of their children feeling the impacts of chemical agents while in their backyards, or even inside their homes. Chicago Public Schools have had to move elementary school recess indoors after tear gas was deployed and teachers have complained of helicopters hovering over their schools, scaring students.
Most recently, schools in north suburban Evanston were impacted. On Friday, Border Patrol agents deployed chemical agents in the city. Citing nearby immigration activities, all schools in the district were placed on lockdown, according to the mayor.
“Let me be extremely clear for all Chicago media: We are NOT targeting schools,” a Department of Homeland Security statement read.
A DHS spokesperson said agents were in the area to arrest five undocumented individuals “whose criminal histories included criminal trespass and multiple illegal entries into the country.”
“A hostile crowd surrounded agents and their vehicle, and began verbally abusing them and spitting on them. As Border patrol arrested one individual, who actively resisted arrest, pepper spray was deployed … to deter the agitator and disperse the crowd,” the spokesperson said.
Allie Harned, a social worker with Chute Middle School in Evanston, said at a news conference Friday that agents’ actions were unacceptable.
“I witnessed some horror today, a block away from Chute Middle School, and this was awful. There were ICE agents and CPB agents pointing guns at community members, spraying pepper spray in the faces of community members … within eyesight of our Chute Middle School students,” Harned said. “This was terrifying. It was terrifying to our community members. It was terrifying to a student who happened to be in a car and witnessed it. It is not okay.”
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said, in a new strategy, the city’s police department is appearing on the scene of immigration arrests, identifying agents by badge number and documenting the impact of their activities on residents.
“There’s only one entity causing serious violence in Evanston right now, and that is the federal government,” Biss told NBC News.
After the Old Irving Park clash drew widespread headlines — and outrage — including over a confrontation between a 67-year-old runner and agents on his street, DHS pushed back on narratives that were circulating. The resident exited the vehicle and uttered an expletive. His hands go up as the brief footage provided by DHS then cuts off. A statement from the man’s running group excoriated DHS for breaking the man’s ribs, accusing them of excessive force.
“HERE’S THE REAL STORY,” the DHS post on X started in all caps. “Border Patrol agents were surrounded and boxed in by a group of agitators.” It then went on to play a brief video clip.
When shown the words in the post, George, a father who lives in the neighborhood and witnessed the incident, laughed.
“Agitators? Brian ran out in his bare feet and Blackhawks pajamas,” he said of his neighbor. “I was wearing a duck costume.”
George, who asked not to use his last name, said he had just returned from the YMCA and he and his two young daughters rushed to change into their Halloween costumes to make it to the nearby parade. When he heard commotion outside, he ran out in his all-yellow costume, repurposed from The Man with the Yellow Hat outfit of Curious George fame.
He described a confusing scene where he could neither tell if someone had been detained nor distinguish immigration agents’ vehicles from that of residents. Looking on and standing beside a vehicle, he was suddenly thrown to the ground by an agent, according to a video reviewed by NBC News. He said he thought he was under arrest, but then, suddenly it all stopped and he got up and moved farther to the side of the street. His head hurt for days and he was treated at urgent care for a mild traumatic brain injury, he said.
George said he wondered why agents didn’t leave sooner to de-escalate the situation. He believes, based on what he saw, they had plenty of space to drive away, despite agents’ claims of being boxed in.
When he returned home, his 5-year-old, who watched the episode from the front door, made a striking comment: “‘Dad, I just don’t understand who the bad guys are.’”
When asked what the most violent episode was that he’s witnessed in his neighborhood, George didn’t hesitate: “1000% this was,” he said of the Oct. 25 event.
Neighborhood resident Brian Kolp, a former Cook County prosecutor and now a private attorney, said he felt immigration agents haven’t been carrying out deportation operations in the highest crime areas of the city.
“Whereas, in Old Irving Park, the worst we could probably do is try to blow them away with our leaf blowers,” Kolp said. “No one around here is in a gang. No one around here is rolling around with any guns. Obviously, in other parts of the city, that’s not necessarily going to be the case.”
Parise questioned the government’s financial justification for its operation in Old Irving Park, which yielded one arrest of an undocumented immigrant but had far-reaching effects on children and other residents.
“What was the return on that? What did you spend to have all those people out there for the day with all of their fake tactical gear and their tear gas and their whatever?” Parise asked. “Also then, what did it take from all the people around here, who are now scared and completely spooked?”
The post Chicago residents say immigration enforcement is leading to children getting tear-gassed appeared first on NBC News.
