One of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s closest City Council allies Tuesday laid the groundwork for filing a lawsuit accusing federal agents of shoving, handcuffing and nearly arresting her after she went to a hospital emergency room to check on a constituent whose leg was severely injured during an immigration raid.
The federal tort claim filed by Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) seeks $100,000 in damages and is a prelude to a federal lawsuit. Fuentes said she couldn’t “care less about the money,” adding her motive is to hold federal agents accountable for “terrorizing and brutalizing” her constituents in the name of immigrant enforcement.
“What I want to prove is that federal agents who are supposed to be law enforcement are not above the law. They’re coming to Chicago and believing they can violate every single local law we have,” Fuentes told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“They are not operating with signed judicial warrants… These federal agents are just picking day laborers and construction workers up in parking lots at Home Depots and Menards. We are watching individuals being chased and not at all asked what their name is, where they live or if they have an ID. People are being physically harmed. These individuals are operating recklessly.”
The confrontation captured on video and prominently displayed on Fuentes’ social media pages occurred Oct. 3 at Humboldt Park Health, 2511 W. Division St.
Fuentes went there after being alerted by the hospital president about a hospitalized constituent who had been taken from the street and detained by masked federal agents. The individual had suffered severe leg injuries.
When Fuentes arrived at the emergency room, she was taken to the room where ICE agents were meeting. The confrontation began as soon as agents stepped out of the room, she said.
“I asked them if they had a signed judicial warrant, then I was shoved by one of the ICE agents, who was fully masked [and] not wearing any identification. I asked again did they have a signed judicial warrant, and I was shoved again. Then I asked again, and I was handcuffed,” Fuentes said.
As the masked agents walked Fuentes out of the emergency room, the alderperson said she asked again why she was being handcuffed and what she had done wrong. She told the agents she did not trespass, nor “touch” the agents or attempt to “impede arrest.” Fuentes said she was an elected official “exercising my right to ask questions” after being summoned by hospital staff.
According to Fuentes, the agents could not articulate their reasons for handcuffing her. Instead, they called for a backup vehicle that arrived with two Border Patrol agents inside, she said. Both of those agents got out of the car and opened the back door. A brief debate ensued about whether to arrest Fuentes, she said.
Only after Fuentes repeatedly identified herself as an elected official, asked again what she did wrong and reiterated that she did not “impede arrest” or “put my hands on anyone” did the agents remove the handcuffs and set her free with a warning that, if she ever “set foot in the hospital again, she would be arrested.”
Fuentes said she is convinced that if the federal agents had not been informed that she was an elected official, and had hospital staff not taken cellphone video of the incident or been there to advocate for her, she “could very well have been arrested on that day.”
People’s Law Office attorney Jan Susler, who is representing Fuentes, described Tuesday’s filing of a “Claim for Damage, Injury or Death” as a “little bit of weird animal” legally. The agents allegedly involved in the incident are not identified in the complaint or in the attached narrative.
The narrative states that the “false arrest, wrongful detention, assault and battery and unintentional infliction of emotional distress” by federal employees who were “negligent and/or willful and wanton” and “proximately caused” Fuentes “physical, psychological and emotional injuries.”
The Trump administration has six months to respond to the administrative claim. If the claims are denied, a federal tort claims lawsuit will be filed in U.S. District Court, Susler said.
“I’m representing her to seek accountability for having been brutalized and terrorized by these unidentified federal agents,” Susler told the Sun-Times. “We’re in a moment where it’s really important to do what she’s doing, which is standing up and insisting on accountability. And while they may be instilling fear in us, we can’t lead with fear. The alderperson is setting a tremendous example of how to respond to this kind of terrorizing in our communities and of our neighborhoods.”