Ranking Democrats on two congressional committees are demanding an investigation and expressing “outrage” over an aggressive immigration raid on a South Shore apartment last week.
The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid on Oct 1 at 7500 S. South Shore Drive.
But Rodrick Johnson, a U.S. citizen, told the Sun-Times agents broke through his door and dragged him out in zip ties. A resident in the neighborhood said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and, and putting them into U-Haul vans.
Johnson said he was left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours before agents finally let him go.
Democrats on the Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on the Judiciary joined Illinois Democrats Reps. Delia Ramirez and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia on Monday in sending a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that demanded answers about the raid. Democrats sending the letter called the raid a “violent, heavy-handed immigration enforcement operation” that traumatized a neighborhood, put children at risk and detained U.S. citizens.
“Treating a U.S. city like a war zone is intolerable,” they wrote in the letter. “We urge you to end such violent, middle of the night operations that traumatize entire communities and put innocent men, women and children, including U.S. citizens, at risk.”
The letter asks Noem and Bondi for detailed information about the raid, including proof of warrants, the number of criminal and administrative arrests and the number of arrests who had active warrants.
They’re also asking for the number of Tren de Aragua members that were arrested, and the number of individuals placed under detention during the operation. And they’re asking for the number of U.S. citizens arrested, and logistics about the raid, including why children were zip-tied and why helicopters were needed.
Federal authorities claimed the South Shore neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but DHS gave no evidence to support the assertion, and authorities did not confirm that any of the people arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.
Alleged Tren de Aragua members have been charged and detained in the city as recently as August. But the Chicago Sun-Times has found little evidence tying them to violence in Chicago.
Gov. JB Pritzker last week directed the state’s Department of Children and Family Services and the Department of Human Services to evaluate how children were treated during the raid.
Pritzker said the two state agencies will contact families and children affected by the raid to gather information. If they receive allegations of suspected abuse or neglect by federal agents, the governor said the state will move to hold the agents accountable.
“Imagine being a child awakened in the middle of the night by a Blackhawk helicopter landing on your roof. Imagine an armed stranger entering your home and forcibly removing you from your bed, zip-tying your hands, separating you from your family and detaining you in a dark van for hours,” Pritzker told reporters Monday. “That didn’t happen in some far away authoritarian regime. It happened right here in Chicago, right here in the United States of America.”
In addition to Ramirez and Garcia, the letter is signed by the ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-MS., as well as Reps. J. Luis Correa, D-Calif. and Shri Thanedar, D-Mich. It’s also signed by the ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Penn.