Federal agents hit a woman’s car while chasing and detaining a man in Albany Park Tuesday morning on the Northwest Side.
Around 8:07 a.m., a black Nissan SUV turned east on West Lawrence Avenue near Kedzie Avenue chasing a man who was shirtless before a different black Nissan SUV pulled out of the parking lot of a nearby grocery store and hit a woman’s car to block the man from running.
During the chaotic situation, agents also threatened to arrest the woman who was behind the wheel of the car. She had been stopped at a red light at the time the SUV hit her car.
Several agents wrestled the shirtless man to the ground. During that scuffle, one of the agents dropped a magazine fully loaded with ammunition on the street (a supervisor retrieved that magazine minutes after the agents left the scene).
As he was brought to the ground under the front bumper of an agents’ vehicle, the man screamed for help, asking agents to get off him. One agent then used a taser on him.
The agent aimed the weapon at bystanders and a journalist before and after tasing the man. Another agent pulled out a can of pepper spray and pointed it at the crowd as he waved vehicles away down the street.
More than two dozen people arrived on scene to face off against about seven agents between five different vehicles — equipped with aftermarket emergency lights but otherwise unmarked. Many onlookers began filming, blowing whistles and screaming at the agents. One agent had a Jerusalem cross sticker on the back of his phone, a Christian symbol dating to the Crusades that more recently has been associated with white supremacy.
Chicago police, who arrived minutes after agents left, took a report of the crash and spoke to witnesses; one officer said if it was a confirmed hit-and-run, Major Accidents would take over the investigation.
“[The agents] didn’t want to show us proof of that,” one officer said to the woman whose car was hit.
The woman driving this Honda Fit was stopped at a red light on West Lawrence Avenue at North Kedzie Avenue in Albany Park when her right rear fender was struck by a car driven by federal agents Tuesday morning. The agents were pursuing a man they soon arrested and then tased.
Violet Miller/Sun-Times
The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
When federal agents left the scene, they drove south toward the Irving Park neighborhood.
In a video posted to social media, Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd) confirmed the man was detained and warned residents as multiple nearby schools were having outdoor activities during the day, and suspected federal vehicles had been parked and circling near Haugan Elementary School the morning before. Her office and the Northwest Side Rapid Response team had put out an alert about the cars on Kedzie
“They took a neighbor from Kedzie and Lawrence,” she said. “We’re trying to keep an eye on everything because there are a few graduations and field days today. Please be careful, take care of yourself if you’re vulnerable, they’re outside in the community right now.”
It’s the same intersection where federal agents detained a man on Halloween in October while firing pepper balls at residents, and just blocks away from where agents detained another man and deployed tear gas two weeks before that.
A WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project, a collective of lawyers and academics, has found that 580 people have been detained in the Chicago area from Jan. 1 through mid-March.
