Federal immigration agents again deployed tear gas on Chicago streets Saturday despite mounting scrutiny from a federal judge over their use of the chemical weapons.
The agents deployed tear gas in the Irving Park and Avondale neighborhoods on the northwest side.
Videos from the scene at North Kildare Avenue and West Old Irving Park showed a group of neighbors marching down the street, filming and blowing whistles as they cussed out federal agents. The officers seen were all masked, some wearing sunglasses.
“The (expletive) out of there man. The (expletive) are you guys doing here? Get out of our city,” Carlos Rodriguez, the resident who filmed the videos, can be heard saying on the recording.“Hey, you are all (expletive) cowards,” another man yells.
A woman then yells at the officers, who were wearing Border Patrol insignia, to show their identification. The piercing sound of whistles could be heard down the block.
Some of agents drove away in a white SUV as the crowd called them fascists, but another vehicle — without license plates — stayed on the scene.
In a different video, plumes of smoke are billowing down the street as the crowd’s shouts and whistles reach a fever pitch. Onlookers scurried to the sidewalk to get away from the chemicals, with a former Cook County prosecutor seen barefoot and in his Chicago Blackhawks pajamas.
Brian Kolp, 41, was drinking coffee on his couch and watching the news as he always does Saturday morning when he saw what’s become an all-too-familiar scene unfold outside his window.
Two U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were tackling a man to the ground on his front yard. Meanwhile, Kolp’s TV continued to blare a news segment discussing the ongoing temporary restraining order restricting federal immigration agents’ use of tear gas.
Kolp, a former prosecutor with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, sprang into action as he sometimes wondered he would have to do throughout the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” these last two months. He didn’t even have time to put on his shoes or change out of his Chicago Blackhawks pajamas, he said, drawing jeers from one of the agents.
“I was calling them Nazis and Gestapo and telling them to (expletive) off, because that’s exactly what they are,” Kolp said. “Quite honestly, when all this started happening, I thought to myself that if the opportunity ever came my way to have to get involved in one of these situations, I was certainly going to do what I could to make sure that they weren’t openly and flagrantly violating the law or the Constitution. And yet, they just went ahead and did it anyway.”
Kolp said he saw three people taken into custody: his neighbor, a landscaper and a rapid response team member. The chaotic scene came to a head on his front lawn, he said, pointing out what appeared to be a tear gas canister still sitting on his porch. But he said he didn’t know why agents thought that necessary and alleged they violated the federal judge’s order to give warning before deploying the chemical.
Kolp said he’s known his neighbor for eight years and that he has two adult sons and lives with his wife, who was still inside the house Saturday afternoon and “pretty upset.” He doesn’t know what he’s going to do for the rest of the day now, besides package up the canister and hand it over to the law firm Loevy & Loevy, which is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Trump administration’s tactics during protests.
“I have a lot of close contacts within law enforcement at the state, local and federal level, and almost to a person, none of them support these actions,” Kolp said. “As a lawyer, someone who adamantly believes in the rule of law and watching it in open sight in front of my house just be completely eroded … it’s upsetting.”
Rodriguez said the street has upwards of 25 children who were excited for a Halloween block party. But after Saturday’s ICE appearance, some families have said they’re scared to go outside.
“They’re terrorized right now,” Rodriguez said. “How do you explain that to a child?”
Saturday was Rodriguez’s first experience with immigration enforcement, though he said he is part of multiple Rapid Response groups on the Northwest side and has helped patrol local schools at drop-off and pick-up times to ensure students are safe.
The federal enforcement officials “just started throwing teargas around,” he said.
Rodriguez said he was stunned to see an immigration enforcement incident right outside his door, but he was heartened by his neighborhood’s response.
“People are organizing and resisting,” Rodriguez said. “I love the fact that so many of my neighbors that I didn’t know are already trained as Rapid Responders and how to talk to people and how to film things.”
In recent weeks, immigration agents have tear gassed Logan Square, Brighton Park, Little Village, East Side and Lakeview, drawing intense criticism and legal scrutiny over allegations of excessive force and claims that they are violating a federal court order aimed at curbing use of the chemical weapons.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino to appear in court personally on Tuesday as part of an ongoing inquiry into potential violations of her restraining order on crowd-control tactics used during Operation Midway Blitz, including tear gas.
The credibility of federal officials has been questioned repeatedly amid the Trump administration’s Operations Midway Blitz, including by U.S. District Judge April Perry, who recently said the federal government has a credibility problem that made many of their claims “unreliable.”
The Department of Homeland Security previously defended using tear gas in Little Village on Thursday, initially saying that its agents were surrounded by protesters who hit Bovino in the head with a rock.
On Saturday, the department released a statement defending its use of tear gas in Lakeview saying they were “swarmed by agitators” who allegedly tried to deflate a vehicle’s tires. The department did not immediately comment on the latest use of tear gas.
Federal agents also hit the Avondale neighborhood, where a tinted vehicle parked outside Adrian’s Fresh Market initially didn’t appear too out of the ordinary to the Saturday crew working the grocery store. But the suddenly, masked agents jumped out and grabbed the tortilla delivery driver known as Nacho, witnesses said.
“It was scary because my dad also said he was also pulling up to the store to do the deliveries, and he saw the car next to his truck, but he didn’t know it was Border Patrol,” said store manager Adrian Guallpa, 24. “My dad said he’s a citizen, so they left him, but they were more focused on Nacho, so they went to go grab him. … and when he tried to go inside the store, they followed him in and pulled him out.”
Annabel Del Rey was heading to her grandmother’s funeral when she saw the masked agents take Nacho into custody. She said she rushed over and tried to ask the driver for his name, but the agents blocked her and left.
A video posted on Reddit by Guallpa’s friend shows a man in a blue cap and black jacket falling backwards through the door and into the store, struggling to free himself from a federal agent who then pins him to the ground.
Two other agents burst inside, one of them also restraining the man as his hat falls off. All three push him outside, as a concerned man and woman follow.
“One of the cashiers cried because they know him, like they’ve been working with him for a long time,” Guallpa said. “I feel angry. Because he’s very committed to his work. He comes every day on time.”
Guallpa said he doesn’t know much about Nacho’s personal life, as the driver liked to keep their conversations focused on business and their day-to-day activities. He did say he knows Nacho works for the Atotonilco tortilla factory. A weekend manager for the business said they could not immediately comment Saturday.
As for what Guallpa plans to do the rest of the day, he said: “Try to keep the business running for a bit. Because we still have to help the community that’s still coming to the store.”
______
