A video taken by a bystander, and seen by CBS News Chicago, captured two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining an educator inside a North Center daycare Wednesday morning.
The video shows two masked federal agents in plainclothes and wearing vests labeled “POLICE” inside the Rayita del Sol Spanish Immersion school and daycare’s Roscoe Village location. A woman can be heard screaming through the glass doors as the agents physically wrestle her out the door, at one point picking her up. They slam her, face-first, into the outer door as they push her outside.
Other video showing more agents outside the school show their vests are labeled “POLICE ICE.”
Once outside, she’s pushed against a dark grey sedan parked outside the building as agents try to handcuff her with her hands behind her back. One agent briefly goes back inside as she’s seen pointing and speaking to the other agent.
The video was quickly shared among local parents’ groups on WhatsApp and posted to social media.
CBS News spoke with the director of the Rayita del Sol Roscoe Village location, who confirmed the woman is a pre-K teacher who had just been detained at the time of the phone call, but she didn’t have any further information.
A Biden-era rule that previously made schools and other locations “protected” or “sensitive” areas where immigration enforcement should generally not take place have been scrapped by the Trump administration, but acting director of ICE Todd Lyons has told CBS News that his officers would only go into these locations if a fugitive flees into one.
A senior DHS official told CBS News that two people, including the woman seen in the video, ran into the daycare after fleeing an ICE vehicle pursuit. DHS said one of the people who fled locked the door, while the other was detained. The official said it wasn’t clear if either person worked at the pre-K, but it appears that was the case.
A parent who witnessed the entire incident told CBS News Chicago that the ICE agents grabbed a security door and held it open to make the arrest. Matt Champion said he had gotten to Rayito at 6:55 a.m., five minutes before doors officially opened, to drop his child off at school and parked in the lot. At 7:05 a.m., Champion said he saw a black car followed by an SUV pull into the parking lot from Addison, and added that “neither car was driving particularly fast.”
Champion said the black car stopped and a teacher got out and ran into the school, through two sets of doors including an inner locking door. He said an ICE agent grabbed the security door as it was shutting and held it open as the other agents entered the school. He then saw two agents grab the woman’s arm and drag her outside, where she was handcuffed and put into the SUV.
As this was happening, Champion said others parents who had arrived for school had started filming, and staff from Rayito were telling agents to leave the property as one agent remained inside. The last agent left the school, all the agents got into the SUV with the teacher and then they sped off, Champion said.
Ald. Matt Martin, who represents the 47th Ward where the school is located, said he has seen video from inside and outside the daycare center showing what he said was the teacher being violently detained while children were present.
“It is some of the most chilling video footage I have ever seen, certainly in my time in office,” Martin said.
Martin said the video shows that the teacher was followed into the building by what he said were ICE agents. He said the agents were not invited inside the building, and that they were armed with guns, walking around the facility with children and teachers present.
Martin said he is demanding the teacher’s immediate release, and is working on all legal avenues to ensure that happens as soon as possible.
“I saw dozens of parents and educators weeping,” he said. “You have an educator who is going inside to teach our children, and you have federal agents with guns going inside, without permission, to violently take her away.”
“Our communities don’t need this right now,” Martin added. “This is not the sort of help that we need from the federal government, and I just hope that we have leaders in Washington who are seeing what’s happening and are making it stop. I can’t put into words what it was like to walk in and see all those families and educators distraught.”
At a midday news conference, U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Chicago) said he is calling for immediate answers and accountability from DHS about this incident, saying the teacher was a “trust ed member of the community with a work permit.”
Quigley said there are clear guidelines for immigration enforcement in sensitive places like schools and houses of worship, and that the morning’s arrest “shows this administration’s contempt for public safety and complete lack of humanity.”
Maria Guzman, a city of Chicago employee whose child attends Rayita del Sol, said the agents entered the school without consent and without a warrant.
“We are a country of immigrants and it is absurd and horrific that they have now targeted our daycare centers,” she said. “They have crossed a line. Our schools, our libraries, our churches should be safe places for our children.”
Nicole Sganga and
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
contributed to this report.
