CHICAGO — Federal agents handcuffed Humboldt Park-area Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) as she confronted them Friday at Humboldt Park Hospital.
Agents handcuffed Fuentes, forced her out of the hospital and threatened her with arrest, Fuentes told a Block Club reporter. The agents appeared to be with ICE, she said.
“It shows just how much this is escalating,” said Fuentes, who is Puerto Rican and represents a Chicago neighborhood that is a Puerto Rican enclave. “They don’t care about people’s constitutional rights. They can handcuff an elected official for doing absolutely nothing — just imagine what they’re doing to the residents in the city of Chicago, whether they are documented or not. These federal agents don’t give a damn.”
A video of the Friday afternoon incident shows Fuentes at the hospital, asking federal agents if they had a signed warrant and telling the agents a man — who they had detained — has constitutional rights. Fuentes is not seen touching the agents, one of whom tells her he will arrest her if she does not leave.
Fuentes again asks the agents if they have a warrant, and an agent grabs Fuentes, spins her around and handcuffs her hands.
“This is an alderperson who is being under arrest,” a person off-screen says in the video.
“This is a hospital. Do you have a signed judicial warrant for him?” Fuentes says to the agents.
“We told you to leave,” says the agent who handcuffed Fuentes. “Now you are under arrest for impeding.”
Fuentes was led outside the hospital and released. She was told that if she went back inside, she would be arrested, witnesses said.
“Chicago’s elected officials have a First Amendment right to document ICE’s actions and to inform their constituents of their rights without federal interference,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement upon hearing of the incident. “Any attempt to block this work is a direct attack on democratic accountability and an assault on the rights of the people of Chicago.”
The agents were at the hospital because a person they’d been chasing fell and was injured, Fuentes said. They brought the person to the hospital; when Fuentes heard about what happened, she went there.
Agents were not allowing the man they’d arrested to speak with attorneys, Fuentes said.
Adrian Rodriguez, a Humboldt Park activist and member of the Northwest Side response team, also showed up during the incident and helped escort undocumented people in the ER back to their cars or home out of fear, he said.
“People were leaving before they got service,” Rodriguez said.
At a news conference afterward, officials and Northwest Side organizers urged people to not be fearful of increased ICE activity and to work together to stand up to federal agents. THEY thanked the many neighbors and response team members who showed up at the hospital.
Ald. Anthony Quezada (35th), who was also at the hospital, urged every Chicagoan to call their alderpeople to and pressure them to stand up to ICE if they are not already doing so.
“Every single one of you needs to call your alderman today, tomorrow and every single day, and ask them, ‘What are you doing to stand up to ICE? What are you doing to hold this fascist and authoritarian government accountable?’” Quezada said.
Feds Tear Gassed Street Of People — Including 2-Year-Old
The incident comes amid a flurry of ICE activity throughout Chicago on Friday. Numerous people have reported seeing agents patrolling and detaining people in the neighborhoods, and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was involved in a raid at a local Walmart.
In another incident caught on video Friday, federal agents inside a car threw tear gas and what appeared to be smoke grenades into a Logan Square street while people were outside nearby.
Bill and Jessica Higgins were walking home with their 2-year-old from school when they heard drivers honking their horns, people blowing whistles and a helicopter circling above. The couple lives a block away from Rico Fresh, a grocery store on the corner of Armitage and Central Park Avenue, which was the scene of what appeared to be an attempted ICE raid.
Smoke suddenly filled the air, Jessica Higgins said. She got caught in the smoke while her husband rushed ahead with their child in a stroller.
“It hit me even before I realized it,” Jessica Higgins said. “I thought I was outside the cloud of it, but after a few seconds … it’s just like a burning in your eyes and in your lungs. And I just started coughing, and my eyes were tearing.”
A video Jessica Higgins took before she started coughing shows smoke filling the air and a man yelling out for water for his burning eyes.
“It seems reasonable to expect that in an American city, you could go a block away from your own house and not worry about getting tear gassed when you’re just getting home from preschool,” Bill Higgins said.
Other videos from the scene taken by neighbors and passersby show a federal agent in a white SUV throwing something out of his window. Another angle shows a federal agent using his baton to strike something several times outside the frame of the video.
Another resident, who did not want to share her name for safety reasons, said she was walking out of Rico Fresh when she saw the clouds of smoke. She said her lungs and eyes burned, making it impossible for her to see. She walked to a nearby alley, where a woman loading her groceries into a car gave her a water bottle to wash out her eyes.
The resident, an immigrant from Kazakhstan, said the incident made her fear for the future of the United States, which she fled to for a better life.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand how good they have it in this country, maybe because they didn’t experience it in other countries. I’m afraid that this country will become authoritarian because of everything that is happening,” she said. “This is how it starts, with the baby steps, with normalizing this behavior. … I hope people don’t tolerate this kind of behavior. If this is going to become normal, there will be no hope in the future.”
At the Broadview ICE facility, border patrol Chief Greg Bovino made an appearance with a group of agents who attacked protesters.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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