When a group of Oak Park Girl Scouts and their parents set out for the group’s annual food drive Saturday morning, they imagined it would be a day of helping in their community.
Instead, the girls encountered masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with weapons and vehicles with dark-tinted windows as the sounds of whistles pierced the air.
“It just went from a morning of us trying to do something good and teaching the kids about helping others,” said Brooke Groulx, an Oak Park parent. “ICE turned it into a scary and what felt like an unsafe environment for us to be out with these kids.”
The 45-year-old mom of four and her 7-year-old daughter were among a group collecting donations for Oak Park’s Beyond Hunger food pantries.
In the 700 block of Elmwood Avenue, they came upon a crowd surrounding federal agents and their vehicles and blowing whistles. Nearby, landscaping equipment was scattered on the ground, Groulx said.
The scouts initially decided to continue with their food drive after Groulx explained to the girls that “just like a lifeguard blows a whistle to help somebody, these are neighbors that are blowing whistles to help somebody.”
But after seeing more vehicles, presumably driven by federal agents, speeding past, she said the group decided it was not safe to continue with the food drive.
“It’s a gorgeous day, and we should be outside enjoying it,” Groulx said. “It’s heartbreaking as a mom.”
A video filmed in Oak Park on Saturday and shared privately with the Sun-Times shows three federal agents handcuffing a man and leading him away. In another, community members film a minivan carrying uniformed federal agents before it drives away.
The Oak Park Police Department responded to “about five reports” of ICE activity Saturday morning, including one in the 700 block of Elmwood Avenue, but the officers did not observe any agents when they arrived, a spokesperson told the Sun-Times. The spokesperson said the department did not make any arrests and could not confirm the number of arrests made by ICE.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on ICE enforcement activity in Oak Park on Saturday.
“The irony of it is very apparent,” said Tim Granholm, 39, an Oak Park parent of three Girl Scouts. The scouts “are unable to help their neighbors because of these masked men in the community.”
Granholm said his daughters did not encounter federal agents but their food drive was also cut short because of the ICE activity. The scout leaders and parents took the girls back to a neighborhood school, where they started the food drive Saturday morning at 9.
“We put our kids in these programs to learn to care for others and think about people other than themselves,” Granholm said. ICE agents “are not welcome in our neighborhood. We have not asked for this. It’s frankly putting us and our kids in danger.”
Groulx said that since immigration enforcement began in her neighborhood and across Chicago, it has been a challenge to have conversations with her children and explain why masked and armed agents are in their community.
“We’re focusing on how we and the community are working together to try to make sure that all of our community feels safe,” she said. “It upsets me because we try to teach our kids to do good, and they see others doing things that might be harmful. It’s hard to explain that to them on the flip side.”