Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children
Residents of a South Shore apartment building were jolted awake late at night last week when nearly 300 federal agents, backed by helicopters and flashbang grenades, stormed their homes in a massive immigration raid.
A video posted to social media by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) portrayed the raid at 7500 S. South Shore as a military-style operation to capture young brown men. In reality, federal agents detained nearly every resident of the 130-unit building—including children and babies—placing them in zip ties and separating them by race into vans for more than two hours early Tuesday morning.
In video footage from NewsNation, whose camera crew was invited to join the raid, masked agents are shown surrounding the building wearing green uniforms, with vests and yellow lettering spelling out “U.S. Customs and Border Patrol”.
Some officers pointed handguns equipped with tactical lights at the building; others held long rifles and wore helmets equipped with cameras and lights. Helicopters hovered in the sky, and agents on the ground threw flashbang grenades. Hastily awakened residents were only given a few seconds to open before agents broke doors down and forced their way inside, according to recordings by residents witnessing the raid.
In the NewsNation footage, agents appear to cut and damage a fence on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) property before using it as an entryway to detain people and move them into the school lot, which became an impromptu parking and staging area for the immigration operation.
In an interview with NewsNation, U.S. Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino said that U.S. citizens were also detained during the raid due to safety reasons, saying “we generally don’t determine alienage while in the building,” adding, “no rights have been violated today.”
Masked agents made people line up outside the building, where they asked each resident their name and country of origin before lifting their shirt to check for tattoos. They proceeded to ask people if they had documents that proved they resided in the U.S. legally. One by one, building residents, including Black U.S. citizens, were loaded into vans where they were questioned further.
https://southsideweekly.com/federal-agents-storm-south-shore-building-detaining-families-and-children/
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