Immigration Crackdown Spreads Through Chicago, Including Wealthy Neighborhoods

Just before noon on Friday, Abbey Nystedt was busy on a Zoom call at her Lakeview home when she heard the shriek of whistles, now an understood warning in Chicago that immigration agents were nearby.

Federal agents had just pulled up on a quiet block of multimillion-dollar houses a short walk from Wrigley Field, sending a four-man construction crew working in the front yard of one home scrambling to escape.

Dozens of neighbors poured outside of their homes, shocked and confronting the agents. After a chaotic back-and-forth, neighbors said the agents released tear gas without warning, sending people choking for air and rinsing their eyes out with water from garden hoses.

“People were coming out of their homes to record, to yell, to tell ICE to leave our neighborhood — it was a whole bunch of people with their freaking goldendoodles,” said Ms. Nystedt, who works in the hospitality industry, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “What am I going to do, go back to my Zoom call when people across the street are being denied their constitutional rights?”

Federal immigration operations are now penetrating nearly every corner of Chicago, and many residents are responding with anger.

This week, agents have released tear gas, made arrests and interrogated people on the streets of Little Village and the Southwest Side, areas that are heavily populated with Latino families and some undocumented immigrants. But the federal crackdown on illegal immigration that began more than six weeks ago has also started to play out in some of Chicago’s quiet suburbs and most expensive neighborhoods.