It began with a viral photo on Reddit: a heavily armed federal agent, finger near the trigger, aiming a crowd-control launcher at a protester on a quiet Chicago street. Posted under the headline “ICE aims gun at Americans,” it racked up more than 119,000 upvotes and fuelled outrage, speculation and fear. But behind the image lay a far bigger story — a federal chase that ended with a deliberate crash, tear gas fired into a residential crowd, a teenager detained without charge, and growing questions about how US immigration enforcement came to look more like a paramilitary raid than a police action.

The image that set Reddit ablaze this week is not an AI fake or a classically misattributed photo. It was taken by Anthony Vazquez of the Chicago Sun-Times and first published with the followin

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