Federal agents rammed into a vehicle following a chase through a residential neighborhood in Chicago and then fired tear gas into a crowd of bystanders and local police officers.
Security video recorded by nearby businesses appears to show federal agents in a white SUV pursuing a red SUV before intentionally crashing into the lead vehicle in a risky maneuver banned by many police departments, including Chicago's, and they fired chemical irritants toward a crowd that gathered to protest, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
“When you’re using these tactics, you are asking people to be hospitalized,” said Oscar Sanchez, a member of a rapid response network that tracks immigration enforcement activity. “You see elderly folks on the [ground], so you just ask yourself, what is this for? Why is the aggression needed? Why are these elevated tactics even being used?”
Sanchez saw an agent hit a teenage girl in the head with a tear gas canister, and photojournalists captured images of masked agents pointing rifles at bystanders and local police officers who had shown up to de-escalate the situation washing out their eyes with water from a hose.
A Facebook video showed parents fleeing from the tear gas carrying a baby in a carrier, and Chicago police say 13 agents were overcome by the chemical irritants fired by federal agents.
A witness told the Sun-Times she saw someone in the crowd throw an object toward the masked federal agents, who she said then threw tear gas canisters into the crowd, and she told the newspaper that agents "slammed" her 15-year-old cousin and 19-year-old boyfriend onto the ground as they fled the chemical cloud.
“They were pushed to the ground really hard, and I don’t think it was that necessary because they didn’t throw nothing,” said 20-year-old Destiny Salazar. “They threw him to the ground and as [he] was saying, ‘My neck, my neck,’ [the federal agent] just kept pushing him down more and more.”
The younger teen, a U.S. citizen who is Hispanic and African American, was held in a garage for five hours without notifying his family or allowing to contact an attorney, according to a lawyer for his family.
“He was then transported to a federal law enforcement facility not affiliated with CBP or ICE, where CBP agents held him, handcuffed, in the back of a vehicle in a garage — never booking him, never reading him his rights, never stating why he was detained, and never allowing him to contact his mother,” said a statement from the Romanucci and Blandin law firm.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement that Border Patrol agents were conducting an immigration enforcement traffic stop when the car allegedly “rammed” their vehicle, but they did not specify where that incident took place and the newspaper has not viewed video of the collision.
“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officers,” DHS said in a statement.
Federal authorities admitted to using a precision immobilization technique (PIT) maneuver to stop the fleeing vehicle, causing it to spin out around 11 a.m. near 105th Street and Avenue N in Southeast Chicago.
“This is not law enforcement; this is the playbook of authoritarian regimes,” said attorney Antonio Romanucci said in a press release. “This behavior by people who have sworn to serve our communities and country is a painful parallel to the days of the Ku Klux Klan patrolling the streets with their faces covered, terrorizing people of color. This horrific behavior has to stop.”