Viral footage outside a daycare facility in the northwest side of Chicago shows federal agents dragging an employee outside the building during an early morning arrest that has drawn outrage from parents and local officials.
Footage of the arrest, which reportedly happened in front of parents and children, shows two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers aggressively pulling a screaming childcare worker from inside Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Learning Center and then pressing her up against an unmarked gray sedan parked outside the doors.
“I have papers,” the woman says in Spanish.
The woman, who is a prekindergarten teacher at the school, remains in federal custody.
“It is some of the most chilling video footage I have ever seen, certainly in my time in office,” according to alderman Matt Martin, who represents the district where the school is located.
The agents were not invited inside the building, did not have a warrant, and were armed with guns while walking into the school with children and teachers present, according to Martin, who has seen footage from both inside and outside the school.
Shortly after Trump entered office, his administration rescinded previous ICE policy that prohibited enforcement actions in sensitive locations like schools and places of worship.
The administration has surged ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents into Chicago and other Democratic-led cities to boost the president’s mass deportation agenda, marked by daily scenes of masked officers slamming protesters to the ground and engulfing neighborhoods with tear gas.
Lawsuits have challenged so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” tactics and called on the courts to force Homeland Security to improve conditions inside a Chicago-area immigration detention facility that has emerged as a flashpoint for protests and clashes with police and federal agents.
According to Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin, officers were trying to conduct a “targeted traffic stop” of a car registered to a “female illegal alien,” but the male driver “refused to pull the vehicle over.”
“Law enforcement pursued the vehicle before the assailant sped into a shopping plaza where he and the female passenger fled the vehicle,” according to McLaughlin.
“They ran into a daycare and attempted to barricade themselves inside the daycare — recklessly endangering the children inside,” she said.
Roughly one in five child care workers are immigrants, most of whom are Latina, according to research from the National Women’s Law Center and UnidosUS.
In Chicago, that figure is one in every four childcare workers.
Illinois officials and parents are calling the arrest an “escalation” of what has become a months-long immigration enforcement operation in the city.
“What started off as a normal day for the students, parents and teachers … quickly devolved into a nightmare,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley told reporters Wednesday.
Quigley accused ICE of “blatant disregard” for previous ICE policy that sought to prevent arrests on school grounds, which Trump revived in his “contempt for public safety,” the congressman said.
“What has happened today is domestic terrorism,” added Maria Guzman, a city employee and parent of a child who attends Rayito de Sol.
Despite the Trump administration lifting ICE policy that prevented arrests in so-called “sensitive” locations, Illinois state law that is set to take effect January 1 is designed to protect students and children enrolled in early childhood care regardless of their immigration status.
“ICE has normalized preying on everyone in every part of the Chicago area without regard for anyone’s constitutional and civil rights, but today they reached a new low in inflicting trauma on the most vulnerable and helpless among us,” according to a statement from advocacy group Illinois Latino Agenda.
“This morning’s victims: infants, toddlers and children in a daycare center and preschool who had to watch ICE drag their teacher out from inside the building,” the group said. “This was never about safety. It has always been about intimidating us, instilling fear and sowing chaos.
