Amid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door.
On the other side was a mom and her seven-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
“I wasn’t planning on letting her stay, but I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
“I didn’t want them to take her,” said the man, who didn’t want to be named because he fears he’ll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
“I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her, ‘Just stay there. Don’t open, don’t, shh, just stay quiet,’” he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.
At one point, he went outside to check on things. He said ICE shouted at him to “shut my door, get the f–k inside, and don’t open my door again.”
The man had befriended the mom and girl in the building’s laundry room. They are among a group of Venezuelan immigrants who moved in over the past year, some with state rental assistance for asylum seekers and others without a lease, according to one longtime resident.
During the Sept. 30 raid, residents, migrants, including the woman’s husband, and squatters alike were zip-tied in the middle of the night. Other residents — like the man who helped his neighbors hide — were left undisturbed by ICE agents, prompting questions about what federal authorities knew about the building’s occupants ahead of time and how they obtained that information.
Remnants of the raid and interviews with residents who lived through it reveal some hints, including a mysterious map of the building found in the complex and make-shift door stickers that took inventory of occupants in some units.
Federal agents that night arrested 37 people. They claimed some arrested “are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.”
Federal officials also said the surrounding South Shore neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.” Few details have been disclosed about how federal agents came to that conclusion about that Venezuelan gang, or determined who to target. None of the residents, who spoke with WBEZ and Sun-Times reporters in the days after the raid, said they had seen any signs of an international criminal enterprise operating out of the building.
A map of the units and stickers on the doors
Days before the raid, the man who sheltered the mother and her daughter saw someone he believed to be a worker from the building taking pictures of the units “where the Venezuelans lived.”
WBEZ and Sun-Times reporters also found a map crumpled up on the floor in the entryway of an apartment. It labeled each unit inside the five-floor building as “vacant,” “tenant” or as “firearms.” Some units appeared to be marked as both “tenant” and “firearm.”
The units marked “vacant” on the map had clearly been raided, with doors broken down and items scattered everywhere. Most units marked as “tenant” appeared intact, though not all.
This is a re-creation of a map found in the apartment complex at 7550 S. South Shore Drive after the Sept. 30 federal raid. This map does not include unit numbers and is not an exact replica of any of the floors in building to protect the safety of residents. But otherwise it is an exact replica of how the four floors of the building were mapped.
Justin Myers/Sun-Times
Doors of raided units were also marked with what appeared to be some sort of makeshift sticker system. White stickers, made with duct tape and a marker, labeled as “PC” hung on doors of units that had been broken down.
Those units largely lined up with those on the map marked “vacant.” That’s where non-paying migrants or squatters may have been living, according to residents.
It’s unclear if the stickers went up before, during or after the raid.
One resident indicated that a separate set of orange stickers, some listing the occupants inside the apartment, went up during the raid.
Larry, a resident of five years who didn’t share his last name due to safety concerns, said federal agents attempted to break down his door that night. Larry said he went back and forth with agents, as they banged on his door, telling them they didn’t have the right to enter. Eventually he said they left and placed an orange sticker on his door, labeled “no go.” There were orange stickers left on other doors in the building, one labeled “2 adults, 2 kids” another “1 adult male.”
A building employee said they had never seen the map identifying the “firearms” units, but said “I’d like to have that myself.” He said that the map was not created by building employees “of course.”
The building’s management company, Strength in Management, did not answer questions about the map or apparent sticker system.
The apartment where the mother and her seven-year-old daughter hid from ICE that night was marked “vacant.”
The mom and girl stayed with their neighbor for three days, he said. He doesn’t know where they are now.
“Hopefully she’s safe,” he said.