Video raises questions about ICE confrontation on Southwest Side of Chicago
New video circulating on social media shows what appears to be federal immigration agents confronting and attempting to detain a person in the West Lawn neighborhood on the Southwest Side of Chicago, prompting questions about why the stop happened and why the individual was let go.
Saturday morning, two men appearing to be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped in the middle of the street, blocking traffic near 63rd and Kostner, and approached a white car. What happened next was all caught on video.
Sam Hassan, owner of Maxcare Auto Shield, recorded cell phone video showing two men grabbing another man from behind a car and taking him to the ground
"The first thing I saw was they were pinning him against the car. Both of the guys were struggling to subdue him and try to take him to the ground," Hassan said.
Within seconds, the scene grows louder, with neighbors rushing out, yelling for agents to stop.
"The whole neighborhood came out to support this guy, or to stop what was going on," Hassan said.
At one point, the man the agents grabbed appeared to be on all fours and an agent wound up on his back. The man appeared to grab one of the agent's radios and throw it toward a bystander.
Moments later, an agent tried to zip-tie his hands, but the man tossed those away.
"I yelled, 'Let him go,' I mean, because there's certain ways and proper ways of conducting what you're doing, but you're dealing with another human being," Hassan said. "Everything happened so quick, and he looked very scared."
Hassan said a crowd gathered, shouting for the agents to stop.
The video later shows the agents suddenly release the man before they drive off. It's unclear why they let him go.
"Along the way, in trying to take him into custody they discovered they didn't have the basis to do it – somebody may have been challenging them at the scene," said Dr. Arthur Lurigio, a criminology professor at Loyola University.
What prompted the stop is unclear.
Surveillance footage from Hassan's shop shows a white car stopped moments before the struggle. Agents are seen speaking to the driver, then opening the back doors.
Lurigio said it appears possible the agents were not properly trained on how to detain a suspect.
"He wasn't able to subdue the man. He was putting up some resistance, and he was complaining about being grabbed on to, but the guy grabbing on to him didn't know how to get him down, and how steady him and hold him in place," Lurigio said.
He also pointed to another problem: one of the agents was dressed in plain clothes, not a uniform.
"He had nothing to identify who he was. Why he was there? Where he was from? That's a mystery. It should never be a mystery if a person's freedom is being taken away from them on the street," he said. "They were trying to grab this man, for whatever reason, and to place him under arrest. That's taking his freedom away. We need to know who's doing that and why."
The Department of Homeland Security did not explain why agents were trying to detain the man, but a spokesperson said they left the scene without taking him into custody to respond to a call for help from other agents in the Brighton Park neighborhood, amid a confrontation with protesters after agents had shot a woman accused of ramming her vehicle into their car.