On Tuesday afternoon, Pauly stood at the corner of 105th and Avenue N next to the La Flor corner store, examining three metal containers he picked up off his street: a tear-gas canister, a smoke-grenade can, and a pepper-ball projectile round. The Feds had been here.

That morning, a car chase ended in Pauly’s neighborhood, on the East Side of Chicago, a working-class Latino and Black community. Federal agents had been pursuing a car they say was driven by an undocumented immigrant and then allegedly rammed that car intentionally.

As they pursued the occupants on foot, residents like Pauly came out to check on the commotion, and more federal agents arrived. Later, the crowd turned into a kind of protest. It was, by this point, a common scene in Chicago: masked neighbors waving Mexican fla

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