CHICAGO – A staff member at a Chicago daycare and preschool faced detention by immigration officials during the morning drop-off on Wednesday, as reported by eyewitnesses. This incident highlights the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement measures.

According to Alderman Matt Martin, who spoke with witnesses, the employee hurried from her car into the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center as officers arrived at the parking lot. She was apprehended in the entryway, between two glass doors, while asserting her U.S. citizenship. Witnesses indicated that authorities began questioning individuals inside the facility shortly after its 7 a.m. opening.

This event stands out even among the intense tactics of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has led to over 3,000 immigration arrests in the Chicago region since early September. Agents have previously employed extraordinary measures, such as descending from a Black Hawk helicopter in the dead of night, showing overwhelming force in public spaces, and using tear gas during protests.

Witnesses informed Martin that the officers in Wednesday’s operation wore attire marked with “POLICE ICE,” signifying their status as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Video footage shared online shows at least one officer wearing an “ICE” vest during the woman’s apprehension and removal from the premises.

Neither ICE nor the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, its overseeing agency, have provided comments on the situation. Similarly, Rayito de Sol, which has eight branches across Illinois and Minnesota, has yet to issue a statement. In response to the incident, the daycare’s Roscoe Village location in Chicago remained closed for the day.

Parents gathered outside the preschool, sandwiched between dental offices in a strip mall, looking angered and dismayed.

Esmeralda Rosales rushed from work as her husband dropped off their 9-month-old child learned to show support for the staff. She said the woman arrested was her child’s teacher.

“These are the nicest, kindest people. They don’t deserve, these children don’t deserve to be living through this. This is just terrible, terrible, terrible,” she said.

Chris Widen, whose 4-month old is taught by the woman who was detained, said the operation came “at the school during the busiest time of drop-off where kids and families have to witness a teacher being forcibly removed and agents kitted up in practical gear.”

Adam Gonzalez was taking his child to Rayito on Wednesday morning to drop him off at preschool when he saw a commotion outside the school, with people yelling and federal immigration officers in body armor. Something didn’t feel right to him, he said, so he left his kid in the car and went to record the daycare teacher being detained by federal agents.

“I just thought I had to go record this,” Gonzalez said. “The world needs to see what’s happening, that this is not fake, that this is real.”

Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official who has become a face of the immigration crackdown in Los Angeles and Chicago, has staunchly defended the administration’s tactics in the face of threats and protests.

“I didn’t have any reason to think it would be this bad, but it’s far worse than I ever thought,” he said in an interview Monday. He called his agents “sanctuary busters,” a swipe at so-called sanctuary cities, like Chicago, that limit cooperation with immigration authorities.

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Associated Press writer Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed.