Richard Luthmann and I were back for the 63rd edition of The Unknown.
In the current event segment, we discussed the blowup regarding ICE tactics in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb just north of Chicago.
Things blew up days after I visited Evanston and found no anti-ICE signs or (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) ICE activities.
My trip turned out to be the calm before the storm.
A major confrontation between ICE agents and residents- most of whom are citizens-occurred over the weekend.
A day after a major confrontation between Evanston community members and federal immigration agents at the intersection of Oakton Street and Asbury Avenue on Friday afternoon, three people detained at the scene have been released without charges, one of whom shared new details on the incident with the RoundTable.
Several residents described a car crash on Friday involving a U.S. Customs and Border Protection car and a red sedan around 12:20 p.m., which was followed by a confrontation between the agents, the sedan’s female driver and two bystanders.
Witness statements and videos posted to social media confirm that the agents detained three people and deployed pepper spray against a large crowd of residents. One agent pointed his weapon twice at people filming with their cellphones, the video shows.
The incident had an emerging pattern indicative of ICE confrontations. ICE seems to get into a lot of crashes, and they use pepper spray like it’s going out of style.
The last time that I remember the Chicago Police Department (CPD) using pepper spray was in the 1968 Democratic convention: meanwhile, with ICE in the Chicagoland area, it’s a near daily occurrence.
The first thing that hit Sarah Parise was an unfamiliar, pungent smell.
She looked down at her ginger-haired 2-year-old, Leia, who was taking a turn pushing her own stroller near a grassy field where they had stopped to play on a Saturday morning walk.
Then, it kicked in.
“All of a sudden, my eyes were just burning and I couldn’t breathe,” Parise said.
Leia began to scream: “Mommy! Mommy! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”
Law enforcement is supposed to be trained to respond with minimum force necessary, and yet, ICE releases pepper spray so much a federal judge told them to knock it off.
ICE agents also seem to get into a lot of traffic accidents. Take the story of Dayanne Figueroa, a Hispanic US citizen from Chicago.
She was on her way to a coffee shop when she collided with an unmarked ICE vehicle and dragged out.
Dayanne Figueroa was on her way to get coffee before heading to work when she encountered a chaotic scene in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago: heavily armed, masked federal agents making arrests on a residential street.
People yelled as vehicles honked their horn — a sign now used to alert neighbors that immigration federal agents are in the area — and witnesses said federal agents had arrested several landscaper workers presumed to be in the country without authorization.
As Figueroa tried to drive through the 1600 block of West Hubbard Street on Oct. 10, an unmarked vehicle driven by federal agents collided with Figueroa’s as it tried to speed away from a hostile crowd, multiple videos reviewed by the Chicago Tribune show.
Seconds after the crash, agents abruptly stopped their vehicle and exited with weapons in hand pointing at Figueroa, a U.S citizen. Agents then forcibly opened her door and pulled her out of the vehicle by her legs without identifying themselves, presenting a warrant or informing her that she was under arrest. As bystanders yelled, “You hit her! We have it on video!” agents ignored the crowd and forced Figueroa into a red minivan and drove away.
There have been numerous traffic incidents, including one in Evanston, and each time, Tricia McLaughlin, who has emerged as ICE’s chief apologist and propagandist, will put out a statement claiming that the citizen was the aggressor.
That’s what McLaughlin did in Figueroa’s case.
“U.S. Border Patrol was conducting a targeted immigration enforcement arrest of two illegal aliens when an individual used her vehicle to block in agents, honking her horn. As agents were departing, the driver, a U.S. citizen, used her Mercedes Benz to ram the agent’s vehicle,” McLaughlin said. “In fear of public safety and of law enforcement, officers attempted to remove her from the vehicle. She violently resisted, kicking two agents and causing injuries. This agitator was arrested for assault on a federal agent.”
That’s not what video of the incident shows; it’s ICE agents who were the aggressors.
There are about a dozen of these incidents, and the McLaughlin’s statement is always the same: a citizen aggressively caused an accident with an ICE vehicle, which is usually unmarked.
A woman detained by ICE agents in Evanston and taken to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Chicago said she witnessed ICE agents driving aggressively trying to cause an accident.
Moriarty said she and the other two detainees were in the same car when it left the scene, and that it was driven by the Border Patrol agent filmed aiming his weapon at residents. She said the agent drove them “all over the place” for several hours, crossing between Evanston and Rogers Park, and said that at multiple points he slammed on his brakes to try and cause another car to hit his vehicle.
“He jumped out of the car [and] ran to the car behind with his mace out, to try and mace these people — he did that on two occasions,” Moriarty said. “He did it a third time, and one of the other agents in the car said, ‘Do not get out of the car this time.’”
Trump made major gains with the Hispanic community, but those gains are likely gone. He’s targeting Hispanic communities with these raids. Agents are discerning and often target US citizens.
They are thugs, in my opinion.
See the ICE segment below.
