A massive immigration raid at an apartment in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago tormented residents in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Some 300 federal agents, per NewsNation, raided the building, arresting 37 people, with the Department of Homeland Security alleging that “some of the targeted subjects are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators.”
Agents rappelled in from helicopters, broke down doors, used flash bangs, tore tenants from their units, and detained several people—including numerous U.S. citizens—for hours before leaving the building ravaged, according to multiple reports.
Pertissue Fisher, who lives in the building, told ABC7 Chicago that ICE agents forced everyone out and only asked questions later. Fisher said she was handcuffed and questioned before being released at around 3 a.m. The officers, she noted, “just treated us like we were nothing,” and, “It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face.”
Another ABC7 interviewee ducked upon hearing flash bangs detonate, and was then distressed by the sight of children detained. “They was bringing the kids down too, had them zip-tied to each other,” she said. “That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*** them kids.’”
A witness of the same name told the Chicago Sun-Times it was “heartbreaking” to see “kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers.”
Witness Darrell Ballard recalled seeing the agents use a “big, 15-inch chain saw” to cut down a fence. “We’re under siege,” he said. “We’re being invaded by our own military.”
Resident Rodrick Johnson told Block Club Chicago that he heard “people dropping on the roof” before his door was kicked in by agents and he was packed into a van for what seemed like hours, without being told why he was detained.
“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Johnson told the Sun-Times. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
Agents also reportedly left tenants’ doors flung open. Resident Dan Jones, the Sun-Times reports, returned to his apartment “to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor.”
The following day, reports described the building’s hallways as strewn with “toys, shoes and food,” with doors “blown off their hinges” and “holes left in walls.” In one room, per Block Club Chicago, zip ties sat on the floor beside blood stains and baby shoes.
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander-at-large, told NewsNation, which embedded with the federal agents for the operation, that it went “very smoothly.”
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