A US citizen was left bloodied and injured on the side of the road in a Chicago suburb after a confrontation with immigration enforcement agents who mistook him for a fugitive, according to local police and a resident who tried to help the man.
The incident drew condemnation from Illinois officials as backlash grows against ICE’s presence in communities around the country. ICE announced a record number of arrests last month, with nearly 51,000 people arrested.
After realizing he was a US citizen and not the person they were seeking, they released him. Police have visited the man at the hospital and photographed his injuries, and are investigating the encounter. Francis Hospital for minor injuries. “The individual was given lawful commands but was not cooperative and refused to identify himself. “When ICE officers offered the individual assistance, he refused. The incident drew condemnation from Illinois officials as backlash grows against ICE’s presence in communities around the country. He pulled over to document what was happening on video. Around five people stood nearby, and yelled at the agent to stop. When the agent stepped away, Garton saw bloodstains in the shape of handprints on the man’s shirt. Lipson laid out his sweatshirt for the man to rest on while Garton inspected his injuries. The same day, ICE agents shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, the latest in a string of shootings by federal immigration agents that have prompted growing backlash against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration tactics.
Because they feared protesters who had gathered would attack them, it noted, the agent told police he was injured while trying to handcuff the man, and that they left the area immediately after. The man, whose identity was not disclosed, was taken away in an ambulance after the encounter on Sunday in Evanston, a city around 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of downtown Chicago. A federal agent told officers who fucresponded to calls reporting an altercation at just before 10 a.m. that morning that five agents in separate vehicles were looking for a fugitive with a Chicago address and a warrant for his arrest, according to the release. ICE announced a record number of arrests last month, with nearly 51,000 people arrested. Ryan Garton, 56, told The Associated Press that he saw the agents pinning down the man, who was Black, on the side of the road as he was driving home. At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents in President Donald Trump’s second term, including a Colombian man shot dead in Maine in July by an agent with a history of violent behavior, and a Mexican man hit by a tractor trailer as he fled agents in Florida the same month.
He told police his head, neck and teeth were injured, according to a news release from the Evanston Police Department. The agents mistook the man for the fugitive, the agent told police. When the man refused to give his identification, the agents tried to handcuff him, the agent said. One police officer saw blood on the agent’s hands, according to the release. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said in a post on X that the man was treated at St. The police department “continues to investigate the situation, and we will remain vigilant about federal activities,” he wrote. U Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had “encountered an individual who resembled the target” of a “targeted enforcement operation,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. The officers “left the scene without further incident” after the man identified himself, according to the statement. “I am disgusted and outraged by reports of what happened in my hometown of Evanston on Sunday,” Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky said in a statement. One agent had his knee on the man’s back and was “beating up on him,” Garton told the AP. “I’m a citizen, leave me alone,” Garton said the man screamed as the agent pinned him down. Garton said he urged the agent to get off the man so he could inspect his injuries, and that the agent acknowledged that he was already aware the man was a U.S. citizen. “His upper right eye socket and temple were swollen as if he had been punched” and his face was scraped “as if it had been ground into the sidewalk,” he said. The man told Garton that he had been walking to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription when the agents stopped him. Michael Lipson, the owner of a store across the street from where the incident occurred, said he saw the agents wrestle the man to the ground as he repeatedly yelled that he is a U.S. citizen. The man’s face looked “badly messed up,” Lipson told the AP. Lipson said the agents checked cards and papers from the man’s wallet before leaving them scattered on the road. ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, during the Trump administration’s siege of Minneapolis, named “Operation Metro Surge,” earlier this year. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
