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Large-scale immigration raids have continued in Chicago, even as the legality of deploying the National Guard awaits a decision from the Supreme Court.
On Oct. 22, federal immigration officers descended on Little Village, a South Side neighborhood at the heart of Chicago’s Mexican community. Alderperson Mike Rodriguez told USA TODAY at least eight people were arrested, four of whom were U.S. citizens.
It was the latest in President Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz, his Chicago-area immigration enforcement crackdown. Trump launched the blitz on Sept. 8, saying it was needed to catch "the worst of the worst" criminal immigrants. Many local critics say instead innocent people are being left terrorized. As of Oct. 8, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 1,500 people. But USA TODAY has been unable to confirm that number or track down exactly where all of the incidents are occurring. At an Oct. 20 federal court hearing, a top Homeland Security official said around 75 people had been arrested in connection with protesting immigration enforcement.
A look at some of the high-profile events, like clashes with local elected officials, a raid on a South Side apartment building and ongoing protests at an ICE facility in the suburbs, show the immigration efforts have come to neighborhoods all over the city. Here is what to know:
Little Village, heart of Chicago’s Mexican community, raided
Federal immigration enforcement agents raided the city’s longtime historic Mexican neighborhood on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23, removing several people, causing car accidents and brandishing weapons, according to residents, local leaders and advocates.
Agents in the morning descended on the commercial corridor of Little Village, a South Side neighborhood and heart of Chicago’s Mexican community. Photos and video from the scene show masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents sprinting after people and local business owners locking their doors ahead of agents.
"A reign of terror was brought upon our neighborhood," Ald. Mike Rodriguez told USA TODAY. "They took at least eight people, of those eight, four were U.S. citizens, and two were members of my staff."
Among the agents on the scene was Customs and Border Protection Commander at-Large Chief Gregory Bovino. The longtime Homeland Security official spearheaded the immigration enforcement crackdown in Los Angeles and is seen as directing the agents' aggressive tactics in Chicago.
Federal agents rappel from helicopters in South Shore apartment raid
Federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters. Dozens of others, their faces hidden behind masks, arrived in moving trucks. In total, 300 officers stormed a South Side apartment building that Department of Homeland Security officials say harbored criminals.
Hundreds of agents swarmed apartments in the multi-story building, detaining several American citizens, including children, for hours and netting 37 total arrests. The outcome of those arrests remains unclear.
The Chicago Sun-Times and NewsNation were among the first to report on the raid in the city’s South Shore neighborhood. The historically Black area gained a sizable Venezuelan population after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused tens of thousands of migrants from the border to the Democratic-led city in 2023. Many moved to the neighborhood after first being placed in city-run shelters in the area.
Videos of the raid shared online by the Department of Homeland Security show Border Patrol agents with guns drawn approaching the building in the middle of the night. Agents led shirtless men outside. The raid saw dozens arrested and the building left in shambles, according to photos shared with USA TODAY. Two "confirmed Tren de Aragua members" were captured, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.
Customs and Border Protection Commander at-Large Chief Bovino was also on hand for the raid.
Broadview facility in the suburbs center of many protest clashes
The ICE facility in Broadview lies on an industrial strip surrounded by residential streets. The small village of some 8,000 people outside of Chicago is home to the region’s main immigration enforcement facility, and it has become a hotbed of clashes between federal agents and anti-immigration enforcement protesters.
DHS officials said they had arrested more than 30 people in connection with the protests as of the beginning of October, including three who had loaded guns. Agency officials did not immediately respond to requests for further information on the people arrested.
Charges against many of the protesters have been downgraded or dropped, including against two of the protesters who were found to be carrying guns. Charges against Ray Collins and Jocelyne Robledo were dropped after a grand jury declined to bring an indictment, a rarity in the federal court system.
Homeland Security officials did not provide the name of the third person they said had been arrested with a gun.
Federal agents have used chemical agents, including pepper spray and tear gas, in plain sight to disperse Chicago protesters blocking immigration enforcement vehicles. On Sept. 26, agents also fired chemical agents at protesters and journalists standing in a road leading up to the immigration enforcement facility located at 1930 Beach Street in Broadview.
Agents' use of chemical weapons on protesters, clergy and journalists resulted in a lawsuit where a federal judge on Oct. 9 ordered federal agents to limit their use of the munitions. U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis called agents' use of the munitions "unprovoked" and likely "constituted excessive force".
Department of Justice lawyer Eric Hamilton said in an Oct. 9 hearing that agents had used $100,000 worth of chemical weapons outside the suburban facility.
Man killed by federal immigration officers in Northwest Suburbs
Federal immigration agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in the city’s Northwest suburbs who they say was resisting arrest and dragged an agent with his car, officials said on Sep. 12. Reuters reported the incident happened in Franklin Park.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said he ignored commands from federal agents and drove his car into an officer attempting to arrest him. The agent suffered multiple injuries and is in stable condition, according to an agency statement. In body-worn camera footage from the scene, the agent describes his injuries as "nothing major."
DHS said in a statement that the situation arose from an "enforcement operation targeting a criminal illegal alien" and that agents had "conducted a vehicle stop to arrest" the man.
Former federal judge and prosecutor Ruben Castillo said that the shooting would be among the first incidents a new commission from the office of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker would investigate. "There are serious questions about that shooting and that killing," said Castillo, who is leading the commission.
Border Patrol agent shoots woman on South Side
A Border Patrol agent in Chicago shot a woman after she and at least one other person allegedly rammed cars into vehicles carrying federal authorities, as protests over immigration enforcement intensify and the Trump administration vows to deploy federal troops to the Democratic stronghold.
Chicago residents Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz were arrested on charges of assaulting, impeding and interfering with the work of federal agents with a deadly weapon, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Northern District of Illinois.
Martinez’s attorneys say federal agents attacked their client: “We don't think this is a complicated case,” said attorney Christopher Parente in an Oct. 15 hearing. “It's a car accident where one of the drivers gets out and shoots the other driver.”
The incident occurred in Brighton Park.
Chicago news producer handcuffed, arrested, not charged
Federal Border Patrol agents on Friday, Oct. 10, detained a Chicago news producer during an immigration enforcement operation in the neighborhood known as Lincoln Square.
Video of the incident shows masked agents holding Debbie Brockman, of WGN-TV, face down in the middle of the street as they handcuff her. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes Border Patrol, has accused her of throwing an object at a Border Patrol car. WGN reported that she hasn’t been charged with a crime.
A man recording the incident asked for her name. Brockman, whose LinkedIn lists her as a producer, identified herself and said she works for WGN, a Chicago-based news station. “Let them know,” she said.
Agents then placed her in the back of an unmarked gray Chrysler minivan with tinted windows as onlookers yelled at them.
Illinois state representative stopped by Border Patrol agents
Illinois Representative Hoan Huynh was pulled over by federal immigration officials on Oct. 21 in the northwest neighborhood of Albany Park, video shows. The narrator says he was following immigration officials and being followed by agents.
"I never thought I would have a gun pulled on me by ICE agents, but that’s exactly what happened to me yesterday," the state representative said in a post on Facebook.
Huynh said that he had been canvassing his district to inform people of their rights should they encounter immigration agents.
"I am a refugee who came to the United States with my family after fleeing an authoritarian regime in Vietnam," Huynh said. "I know what it means to live in fear of the government, and I will not stand by while families here in Chicago face that same fear from ICE."
Woman pulled out of car in West Loop school pickup line in viral video
A viral video posted Oct. 8 shows several federal immigration officers pulling a woman out of small blue SUV. Fox 32 reported it happened in the West Loop at a school pickup line in sight of other parents and children, though she was not there to pick up their children. The outlet also reported another woman was arrested, though she can’t be seen in the video. The woman being arrested said she had been followed there.
Raids in East Side and Albany Park neighborhoods have become focal point in lawsuit over agents’ use of chemical weapons
On Oct. 14, federal agents pursued a suspect in their vehicles through a neighborhood on the far Southeast Side of Chicago that resulted in a car accident. Neighborhood residents gathered to protest immigration enforcement and agents deployed chemical to disperse the crowd, Homeland Security officials said in a hearing on Oct. 20.
Ellis, the federal judge presiding over the case regarding immigration agents' use of chemical weapons, called top Homeland Security officials Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander for Customs and Border Protection, and Shawn Byers, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy field director, into court to testify regarding agents' use of chemical weapons in the incident.
Harvick defended his agents' conduct in the East Side neighborhood: "We needed to contain that scene," he testified, "and then more and more people started to come and then some of those people started to throw objects."
A Chicago Sun-Times photo taken at the scene showing an agent pointing a weapon into the face of an unarmed teen has become the face of the kind of intimidation many Chicagoans say they are experiencing at the hands of federal agents.
Ellis has said repeatedly that she has serious concerns about whether federal officials are following her orders that they have to warn protesters ahead of using chemical weapons on them.
The judge also questioned their use of chemical weapons in a similar incident in the Albany Park neighborhood.
At an Oct. 17 news conference, Tom Carol, the pastor of a church in front of the scene of the incident in the North Side neighborhood, called the use of chemical weapons on the residential street "outrageous."
"ICE agents decided to come to this neighborhood and cause trouble for our community, they tried to snatch one of our neighbors on this very block right as church was letting out," the longtime Christ Lutheran Church pastor said. "It was outrageous in our community to see tear gas used to disperse a non-violent crowd, we’ll continue to stand up for our neighbors."
Contributing: Eduardo Ceuvas, Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Where are ICE arrests happening in Chicago? What to know after latest raid
Reporting by Kinsey Crowley and Michael Loria, USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY
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