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CHICAGO (WLS) — There was fear across several Chicago communities Wednesday with immigration raids continuing to unfold.
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Federal agents made immigration arrests at a shelter in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on Wednesday.
Part of the raid was livestreamed on social media as four people were taken into federal custody. The shelter’s executive director called the raid “traumatizing.”
All of it unfolded just after 9 a.m. Wednesday. Bright Star shelter officials told ABC7 seven unmarked federal vehicles suddenly pulled up. That’s when they say federal agents chased after some of the migrants who were outside of the facility at the time, and the four individuals were detained.
Standing helplessly aside, the pastor of Bright Star Community Church livestreamed the moments four people who lived at the church shelter were detained.
“It’s pretty unbelievable, and you don’t really realize it,” said Lakreshia Kindred, executive director of Bright Star community outreach. “You see it on the news, you hear about it, but then once it actually happens in your backyard it’s a completely different impact.”
The shelter in Bronzeville houses about 260 people, and they say it’s a mixed community of migrants and unhoused Chicagoans. Now the shelter is working on some mental health support as they say the raid was very traumatizing to witness.
“A lot of them are going through very difficult times,” said Caryl R. West, executive director of Bright Star community development. “They’re experienced hardship loss and trauma, and to be at a place where they’re supposed to get shelter and safety then have that compromised it just puts us in a very hurtful situation.”
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday also provided more information on Tuesday’s arrests in the South Shore neighborhood.
At least 37 people were arrested at a South Shore apartment building Tuesday, DHS officials said Wednesday.
DHS says 37 undocumented immigrants were taken into custody at an apartment building there.
The department says the arrests happened in an area frequented by the Tren De Aragua Venezuelan gang and their associates.
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The raids are all part of a continuing wave of federal immigration crackdown sweeping the city, from land to water.
Border Patrol Commander-at-large Gregory Bovino posted pictures to X of a man he says is from Honduras and has been removed from the U.S. five times.
Bovino said in the post, “The Green Machine will keep looking for those law violators living in the United States without any documentation. Want to live in this great country? Then do it the legal way.”
In Albany Park, federal officers were also captured in a video Wednesday morning wrestling a man to the ground outside Roosevelt High School.
“He owns a scrap metal truck that is parked over there,” 33rd Ward Ald. Rossana Rodriguez said. “Some neighbors saw it all happen.”
Ald. Rodriguez said the man was one of at least five people arrested by federal agents in one day on Chicago’s Northwest Side. She says two of the arrests happened near schools.
“There was no operation going on,” Rodriguez said. “They just saw people in vehicles, and they just took them.”
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