Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken.
“I’ve been on military bases for a good portion of my life,” said Darrell Ballard, who lives in the building next door. “And the activity I saw – it was an invasion.”
Ballard recalled seeing residents detained outside the building for hours, after seeing a Black Hawk helicopter flying over the five-story building in the city’s South Shore neighborhood and military-sized vehicles and agents filling the parking lot early Tuesday morning.
All were part of a multiagency operation that led to the arrest of 37 undocumented immigrants, most of them from Venezuela but also including people from Mexico, Nigeria and Colombia, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN.
In the past weeks, federal agents have been deployed on the streets of Chicago and have arrested more than 800 undocumented immigrants since September 8 during what the administration has titled “Operation Midway Blitz,” according to a news release from DHS.
It is unclear if those arrested at the South Shore apartment building are included in that number.
The building was targeted because it was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” and two people arrested are believed to be members of the Venezuelan criminal gang, according to DHS. A number of others arrested had criminal histories that included aggravated battery and possession of a controlled substance, the agency said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the federal operations in a statement released Friday.
“Federal agents reporting to Secretary Noem have spent weeks snatching up families, scaring law-abiding residents, violating due process rights, and even detaining U.S. citizens. They fail to focus on violent criminals and instead create panic in our communities,” the governor said.
Shattered windows marked the apartment building as seen in photos from the aftermath of the raid. Hallways were lined with debris and plastic bags while clothing, wall decor and lamps became piles of litter inside apartment units. CNN has reached out to the apartment building managers for comment.
Tenants said it appears everyone in the building was detained by federal officers, including US citizens.
“It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face,” Pertissue Fisher, who lives in the building, told CNN affiliate WLS. “They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, ‘No, I didn’t.’”
Fisher said she was handcuffed anyway, before being released around 3 a.m. and was told anyone with an outstanding warrant, even if it was unrelated to immigration, would not be released.
At least one US citizen with an active narcotics warrant was arrested during the operation and turned over to the Chicago Police Department, DHS said.
Ballard said the majority of those he saw handcuffed outside were Black residents and “quite a few” were detained for two to three hours.
Four children who are US citizens with undocumented parents were taken into custody, DHS said, including a child who was allegedly found with a Tren de Aragua member.
“For their own safety and to ensure these children were not being trafficked, abused or otherwise exploited, these children were taken into custody until they could be put in the care of a safe guardian or the state,” a DHS spokesperson said.
Across the country, US-born children have become collateral damage in the Trump administration’s unprecedented crackdown on undocumented immigrants. CNN identified more than 100 US citizen children, from newborns to teenagers, who have been left stranded without parents because of immigration actions this year, according to a review of verified crowdfunding campaigns, public records and interviews with families, friends, immigration attorneys and other advocates.
Another neighbor, Eboni Watson, said she and others ducked for cover when hearing several flash bangs go off.
“They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other,” Watson told WLS, recalling trucks and military-style vans were used to separate adults from their children.
In its statement addressing the raid, DHS noted it was still gathering information about those arrested “due to the size” of the operation and will provide more information.
“Federal law enforcement officers will not stand by and allow criminal activity flourish in our American neighborhoods,” DHS said.
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