By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, KFF Health News

In July, federal immigration agents took Milagro Solis-Portillo to Glendale Memorial Hospital just outside Los Angeles after she suffered a medical emergency while being detained. They didn’t leave.

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For two weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractors sat guard in the hospital lobby 24 hours a day, working in shifts to monitor her movements, her attorney Ming Tanigawa-Lau said.

ICE later transferred the Salvadoran woman to Anaheim Global Medical Center, against her doctor’s orders and without explanation, her attorney said. There, Tanigawa-Lau said, ICE agents were allowed to stay in Solis-Portillo’s hospital room round-the-clock, listening to what should have been private conversations with providers. Solis-Portillo told her attorney that agents pressured her to say she was well enough to leave the hospital, telling her she wouldn’t be able to speak to her family or her attorney until she complied.

“She described it to me as feeling like she was being tortured,” Tanigawa-Lau said.

Legal experts say ICE agents can be in public areas of a hospital, such as a lobby, and can accompany already-detained patients as they receive care, illustrating the scope of federal authority. Detained patients, however, have rights and can try to advocate for themselves or seek legal recourse.

Earlier this year, California set aside $25 million to fund legal services for immigrants, and some local jurisdictions — including Orange County, Long Beach, and San Francisco— have put money toward legal aid efforts. The California Department of Social Services lists some legal defense nonprofits that have received funds.

Sophia Genovese, a supervising attorney and clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown Law, said law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, can guard and even restrain a person in their custody who is receiving health care, but they must follow constitutional and health privacy laws regardless of the person’s immigration status. Under those laws, patients can ask to speak with medical providers in private and to seek and speak confidentially with legal counsel, she said.

“ICE should be stationed outside of the room or outside of earshot during any communication between the patient and their doctor or medical provider,” Genovese said, adding that the same applies to a patient’s communication with lawyers. “That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

ICE guidelines

When it comes to communication and visits, ICE’s standards state that detainees should have access to a phone and be able to receive visits from family and friends, “within security and operational constraints.” However, these guidelines are not enforceable, Genovese said.

If immigration agents arrest someone without a warrant, they must tell them why they’ve been detained and generally can’t hold them for more than 48 hours without making a custody determination. A federal judge recently granted a temporary restraining order in a case in which a man named Bayron Rovidio Marin was monitored by immigration agents in a Los Angeles hospital for 37 days without being charged and was registered under a pseudonym.

In the past, perceived violations by agents could be reported to ICE leadership at local field offices, to the agency’s headquarters, or to an oversight body, Genovese said. But earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security cut staffing at ombudsman offices that investigate civil rights complaints, saying they “obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles.”

The assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, said that agents arrested Marin for being in the country illegally and that he admitted his lack of legal status to ICE agents. She said agents took him to the hospital after he injured his leg while trying to evade federal officers during a raid. She said officers did not prevent him from seeing his family or from using the phone.

“All detainees have access to phones they can use to contact their families and lawyers,” she said.

McLaughlin said the temporary restraining order was issued by an “activist” judge. She did not address questions about staffing cuts at the ombudsman offices.

DHS also said Solis-Portillo was in the country illegally. The department said she had been removed from the United States twice and arrested for the crimes of false identification, theft, and burglary.

“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” McLaughlin said. “It is a long-standing practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody. This includes access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

Protections in California

Anaheim Global Medical Center did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Dignity Health, which operates Glendale Memorial Hospital, said it “cannot legally restrict law enforcement or security personnel from being present in public areas which include the hospital lobby/waiting area.”

California enacted a law in September that prohibits medical establishments from allowing federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas, including places where patients receive treatment or discuss health matters. But many of the most high-profile news reports of immigration agents at health care facilities have involved detained patients brought in for care.

Erika Frank, vice president of legal counsel for the California Hospital Association, said hospitals have always had law enforcement, including federal agents, bring in people they’ve detained who need medical attention.

Hospitals will defer to law enforcement on whether a patient needs to be monitored at all times, according to association spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea. If law enforcement officers overhear medical information about a patient while they’re in the hospital, it doesn’t constitute a patient-privacy violation, she added.

“This is no different, legally, from a patient or visitor overhearing information about another patient in a nearby bed or emergency department bay,” Emerson-Shea said in a statement.

She didn’t address whether patients can demand privacy with providers and attorneys, and she said hospitals don’t tell family and friends about the detained patient’s location, for safety reasons.

Sandy Reding, who is president of the California Nurses Association and visited the Glendale facility when Solis-Portillo was there, said nurses and patients were frightened to see masked immigration agents in the hospital’s lobby. She said she saw them sitting behind a registration desk where they could hear people discuss private health information.

“Hospitals used to be a sanctuary place, and now they’re not,” she said. “And it seems like ICE has just been running rampant.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Nov. 18 on a proposal to provide more protections for detainees at county-operated health facilities. These include limiting the ability of immigration officials to hide patients’ identities, allowing patients to consent to the release of information to family members and legal counsel, and directing staff to insist immigration agents leave the room at times to protect patient privacy. The county would also defend employees who try to uphold its policies.

Solis-Portillo’s lawyer, Tanigawa-Lau, said her client ultimately decided to self-deport to El Salvador rather than fight her case, because she felt she couldn’t get the medical care she needed in ICE custody.

“Even though Milagro’s case is really terrible, I’m glad that there’s more awareness now about this issue,” Tanigawa-Lau said.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Jonathan Shorman, Stateline.org

A day after President Donald Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a new directive to its agents: Arrests at courthouses, restricted under the Biden administration, were again permissible.

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In Connecticut, a group of observers who keep watch on ICE activity in and around Stamford Superior Court have since witnessed a series of arrests. In one high-profile case in August, federal agents pursued two men into a bathroom.

“Is it an activity you want to be interfering with, people fulfilling their duty when they’re called to court and going to court? For me, it’s insanity,” said David Michel, a Democratic former state representative in Connecticut who helps observe courthouse activity.

Fueled by the Stamford uproar, Connecticut lawmakers last week approved restrictions on civil arrests and mask-wearing by federal law enforcement at state courthouses. And on Monday, a federal judge tossed a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice that had sought to block similar restrictions in New York.

They are the latest examples of a growing number of Democratic states, and some judges, pushing back against ICE arrests in and around state courthouses. State lawmakers and other officials worry the raids risk keeping people from testifying in criminal trials, fighting evictions or seeking restraining orders against domestic abusers.

The courthouse arrests mark an intensifying clash between the Trump administration and Democratic states that pits federal authority against state sovereignty. Sitting at the core of the fight are questions about how much power states have to control what happens in their own courts and the physical grounds they sit on.

In Illinois, lawmakers approved a ban on civil immigration arrests at courthouses in October. In Rhode Island, lawmakers plan to again push for a ban after an earlier measure didn’t advance in March. Connecticut lawmakers were codifying limits imposed by the state Supreme Court chief justice in September. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont is expected to sign the bill.

States that are clamping down on ICE continue to allow the agency to make criminal arrests, as opposed to noncriminal civil arrests. Many people arrested and subsequently deported are taken on noncriminal, administrative warrants. As of Sept. 21, 71.5% of ICE detainees had no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization.

Some states, such as New York, already have limits on immigration enforcement in courthouses that date back to the first Trump administration, when ICE agents also engaged in courthouse arrests. New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, in place since 2020, prohibits civil arrests of people at state and local courthouses without a judicial warrant. The law also applies to people traveling to and from court, extending protections beyond courthouse grounds.

“One of the cornerstones of our democracy is open access to the courts. When that access is denied or chilled, all of us are made less safe and less free,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that works to provide legal support to immigrants, people of color and low-income individuals.

But in addition to challenging the New York law, the Justice Department is prosecuting a Wisconsin state judge, alleging she illegally helped a migrant avoid ICE agents.

“We aren’t some medieval kingdom; there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Stateline. “Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.”

Some Republican lawmakers oppose efforts to limit ICE arrests in and near courthouses, arguing state officials should stay out of the way of federal law enforcement. The Ohio Senate in June passed a bill that would prohibit public officials from interfering in immigration arrests or prohibiting cooperation with ICE; the move came after judges in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, imposed restrictions on civil arrests in courthouses.

“The United States is a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of law and order. To have a civilized society, laws must be respected, this includes immigration laws,” Ohio Republican state Sen. Kristina Roegner, the bill’s sponsor, said in a news release at the time.

Roegner didn’t respond to Stateline’s interview request. The legislation remains in a House committee.

Knowing where a target will be

Courthouses offer an attractive location for ICE to make immigration arrests, according to both ICE and advocates for migrants.

Court records and hearing schedules often indicate who is expected in the building on any given day. Administrative warrants don’t allow ICE to enter private homes without permission, but the same protections don’t apply in public areas, such as courthouses. And many people have a strong incentive to show up for court, knowing that warrants can potentially be issued for their arrest if they don’t.

“So in some respects, it’s easy pickings,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island.

In June, ICE arrested Pablo Grave de la Cruz at Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal in Cranston. A 36-year-old Rhode Island resident, he had come from Guatemala illegally as a teenager.

“They pulled up on him like he was a murderer or a rapist,” friend Brittany Donohue told the Rhode Island Current, which chronicled de la Cruz’s case. “He was leaving traffic court.”

An immigration judge has since granted de la Cruz permission to self-deport.

McLaughlin, the Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in her statement that allowing law enforcement to make arrests “of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense” — conserving law enforcement resources because officers know where a target will be. The department said the practice is safer for officers and the community, noting that individuals have gone through courthouse security.

Still, ICE’s directive on courthouse arrests sets some limits on the agency’s activity.

Agents “should, to the extent practicable” conduct civil immigration arrests in non-public areas of the courthouse and avoid public entrances. Actions should be taken “discreetly” to minimize disruption to court proceedings, and agents should generally avoid areas wholly dedicated to non-criminal proceedings, such as family court, the directive says.

Crucially, the directive says ICE can conduct civil immigration arrests “where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction.” In other words, the agency’s guidance directs agents to respect state and local bans on noncriminal arrests.

Trump administration court actions

But the Trump administration has also gone to court to try to overcome state-level restrictions.

The Justice Department sued in June over New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, arguing that it “purposefully shields dangerous aliens” from lawful detention. The department says the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, under which federal law supersedes state law.

New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James argued the state law doesn’t conflict with federal law and sought the lawsuit’s dismissal.

U.S. District Court Judge Mae D’Agostino, an appointee of President Barack Obama, on Monday granted James’ motion. The judge wrote that the “entire purpose” of the lawsuit was to allow the federal government to commandeer New York’s resources — such as court schedules and court security screening measures — to aid immigration enforcement, even though states cannot generally be required to help the federal government enforce federal law.

“Compelling New York to allow federal immigration authorities to reap the benefits of the work of state employees is no different than permitting the federal government to commandeer state officials directly in furtherance of federal objectives,” the judge wrote.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The department is also prosecuting Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who prosecutors allege helped a person living in the country illegally avoid ICE agents in April inside a Milwaukee courthouse by letting him exit a courtroom through a side door. (Agents apprehended the individual near the courthouse.) A federal grand jury indicted Dugan on a count of concealing an individual and a count of obstructing a proceeding.

In court documents, Dugan’s lawyers have called the prosecution “virtually unprecedented and entirely unconstitutional.”

Dugan has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for December.

Lawmakers seek ‘order’ in courthouses

Rhode Island Democratic state Sen. Meghan Kallman is championing legislation that would generally ban civil arrests at courthouses. The measure received a hearing, but a legislative committee recommended further study.

Kallman hopes the bill will go further next year. The sense of urgency has intensified, she said, and more people now understand the consequences of what is happening.

“In order to create a system of law that is functioning and that encourages trust, we have to make those [courthouse] spaces safe,” she said.

Back in Connecticut, Democratic state Rep. Steven Stafstrom said his day job as a commercial litigator brings him into courthouses across the state weekly. Based on his conversations with court staff, other lawyers and senior administration within the judicial branch, he said “there’s a genuine fear, not just for safety, but for disruptions of orderly court processes in our courthouses.”

Some Connecticut Republicans have questioned whether a law that only pertains to civil arrests would prove effective. State Rep. Craig Fishbein, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, noted during floor debate that entering the United States without permission is a criminal offense — a misdemeanor for first-time offenders and a felony for repeat offenders. Because of that, he suggested the measure wouldn’t stop many courthouse arrests.

“The advocates think they’re getting no arrests in courthouses, but they’ve been sold a bill of goods,” he said.

Stafstrom, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said in response that he believed the legislation protects many people who are in the country illegally because that crime is often not prosecuted.

“All we’re asking is for ICE to recognize the need for order in our courthouses,” Stafstrom said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV fixed a technical glitch on Friday in a Vatican law that became problematic after Pope Francis named the first-ever woman to head the Vatican City State administration.

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Leo amended the 2023 law to remove a reference that had said the president of the Vatican City State administration must be a cardinal.

Francis in February appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini, a 56-year-old Italian nun, as president of the city state. The appointment was one of many Francis made during his 12-year papacy to elevate women to top decision-making jobs in the Vatican, and it marked the first time a woman had been named governor of the 44-hectare (110-acre) territory in the heart of Rome.

But the appointment immediately created technical and legal problems that hadn’t existed before because Petrini’s predecessors had all been priestly cardinals.

For example, Petrini wasn’t invited to deliver the economic status report of the Vatican City State to the closed-door meetings of cardinals in spring that preceded the May conclave that elected Leo.

Normally, the cardinal-president of the Vatican City State would have delivered the briefing. But those pre-conclave meetings, known as general congregations, are for cardinals only.

In changing the law Friday to allow a non-cardinal to be president of the Vatican administration, Leo suggested that Petrini’s appointment was not a one-off. He wrote that the governance of the territory was a form of service and responsibility that must characterize communion within the church hierarchy.

“This form of shared responsibility makes it appropriate to consolidate certain solutions that have been developed so far in response to governance needs that are proving increasingly complex and pressing,” Leo wrote.

Petrini’s office is responsible for the main revenue sources funding the Holy See coffers, including the Vatican Museums, but it also handles the infrastructure, telecommunications and healthcare for the city state. The Vatican City State commission she heads is responsible for approving laws governing the territory, and approving the annual budgets and accounts.

The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men. While women made strides in reaching top management jobs in the Vatican during Francis’ pontificate, there was no movement or indication that the all-male hierarchy would change rules barring women from ministerial ordination.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

When a masked man grabbed Ernesto Diaz’s left shoulder and slammed him against a vehicle, he thought he was being robbed. 

Diaz, 23, had been walking down Archer Avenue on the Southwest Side in late September, heading toward the CTA Orange Line for a trip downtown. Earbuds in, he was listening to music and said he barely registered the vehicle that pulled up near him. That was until he felt the pain in his shoulder. 

Diaz felt confused and disoriented. He couldn’t hear because “Higher Power” by Coldplay was still playing in his ears. But when he craned his neck, and saw more than half a dozen federal agents surrounding him, he understood what was happening. 

“I’m Hispanic and I’m dark (skinned), so that’s why they picked me up,” Diaz, a U.S. citizen, said. “It feels scary because I’m wearing a target — you know, pick me up because I’m this color. It shouldn’t be like that.” 

Diaz is one of the five U.S. citizens and green card holders the Tribune spoke to who has either been questioned or detained by federal immigration agents during Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz for seemingly no other reason than being Latino, an experience they said was equal parts terrifying and frustrating. 

It’s impossible to say just how many Chicagoans have experienced what experts say constitutes racial profiling since the immigration crackdown began. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly denied that it targets people based on race and said it’s going after the “worst of the worst.” But dozens of reports and videos have circulated in the past couple months — many affecting those working at manual labor jobs. 

Border Patrol agents detain worker Krzysztof Klim while verifying his identification, Oct. 31, 2025, outside a home in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Klim, originally from Poland and now a U.S. citizen, was briefly detained and then released. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

 

Among them, a landscaper in Evanston was handcuffed until he proved he’s an American citizen. House painters and laborers in the northwest suburbs were asked to show proof of citizenship. A woman finishing her shift at a downtown bar zip-tied and questioned for an hour because she “doesn’t look like” her last name.

Under Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, agents’ focus has largely been on Latinos, but the government has also stereotyped working people from other backgrounds without papers, including Polish and Ukrainian handymen in ethnic areas along the city’s bungalow belt and an Illinois Department of Transportation employee, who is Indian, questioned if he’s aware of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at a resurfacing project in Park Ridge.

Those confrontations don’t include scores of arrests of U.S. citizens who were protesting federal officials.

Even when the mass deportation campaign winds down, which sources say could be soon, experts said the effects of discriminatory practices leave a permanent stain: potential lawsuits, diminished trust in the federal government and lasting trauma for the city’s large immigrant and Latino populations.  

“From a societal perspective, it fundamentally creates a world where citizens and people with documented status are treated differently because of the way that they look, because of their race, their ethnicity, or where they work and the communities they work in,” said Michelle Teresa Garcia, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Illinois.

That, she said, “is fundamentally unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, under the equal protection clause, and it is a blight on our societal sense of fairness and community.” 

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment, which included a detailed list of each encounter detailed in this report. Last month, DHS said in a statement that allegations that their officers engage in racial profiling are “disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”

“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” the statement said. “Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests. There are no ‘indiscriminate stops’ being made. The Supreme Court recently vindicated us on this question. DHS enforces federal immigration law without fear, favor, or prejudice.”

‘They’re not even treating me like a human being’

While he was up against the vehicle, Diaz said one of the agents ripped out his earbuds and handcuffed him. He said the masked agents didn’t tell him their names or badge numbers. He worried that they may not even be real agents.

They asked him a series of questions — is he a citizen, does he have a green card, is he here illegally, where was he born, Diaz recalled. He told agents they could check his ID and Social Security card that he’s carried in his wallet since hearing about immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this year. 

While an agent inspected the card, Diaz said he tried to move his sore right arm that was pinned behind his back. 

“And one of the agents says, ‘Don’t move. Don’t try to run.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not trying to run. I’m just getting comfortable,’” Diaz said. “He’s like, if you move again, I’m gonna tase you. And he takes out his taser, and points it at my ribs.”

“I felt like a piece of trash. They’re not even treating me like a human being,” sayidErnesto Diaz, who was detained in Archer Heights by federal agents in September despite being a U.S. citizen. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

After about five minutes, he said an agent put the cards back in his wallet and threw it on the ground. They then walked to their vehicle and drove away, he said. 

“I felt like a piece of trash,” Diaz said. “They’re not even treating me like a human being. They’re treating me like I’m some piece of plastic.”

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Another man, a Little Village resident in his early 20s, also said he was stopped last month by federal agents while walking with his father to the neighborhood’s La Chiquita grocery store. They wanted to buy carne asada and beans for lunch with their family. 

The son is a U.S. citizen. The father is not. But federal agents arrested both men and took them to the ICE facility in west suburban Broadview. 

The son was released later but said he remembers trying to reason with agents that his younger brother has epilepsy and needs their father. He requested anonymity for fear that his father would be retaliated against in ICE detention, where he is currently being held out of state.

“I told them I’m a U.S. citizen, I know my rights,” he said. “All they said was, I don’t (expletive) care.” 

Racial profiling is unconstitutional

Garcia, of the ACLU, said the number of citizens reportedly detained throughout Operation Midway Blitz demonstrates that the government isn’t simply making targeted arrests, as it often claims. 

“The fact they are sweeping up U.S. citizens and people with documented status is further proof the agenda is not about addressing crime and violence, but rather, it is about creating a society where people of color are living in fear,” Garcia said.

In September, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that roving patrols were conducting indiscriminate stops in and around Los Angeles. The order had barred immigration agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location, The Associated Press reported.

The majority did not explain its reasoning, as is typical on the court’s emergency docket. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the lower court judge had gone too far in restricting how federal immigration agents can carry out brief stops for questioning, the AP said.

Jasmine Gonzales Rose, a professor at Boston University School of Law who teaches courses on Latinos and the law, said that racial profiling remains unconstitutional because it violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unlawful seizures and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. It also, she said, “really diminishes the freedom of all people.” 

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking that families are being torn apart and U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike are being told that they’re not safe to go about their daily business without government intrusion into their lives,” she said. 

She also said the government targeting Latinos and treating them as “others” — or that they aren’t truly a part of the country — is ironic because there’s a long history of Latinos living in the Americas before Europeans arrived. Traits of a so-called Mexican appearance are features often associated with indigeneity to the Americas, she said.

“It’s very painful for people to be questioned whether they’re a full citizen based upon their appearance, their language,” Rose said. 

Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he’s “appalled” citizens are being harassed and detained.

“These practices are fundamentally un-American and do nothing to make our community safer,” he said. “Our neighbors shouldn’t live in fear of being stopped and questioned based on the color of their skin.” 

The governor also sharply criticized a reported stop in Park Ridge on Nov. 7. His office said three masked agents questioned the immigration status of an IDOT employee, who is Indian and a U.S. citizen, working at the Busse Highway resurfacing project. The agents allegedly asked the employee whether he had traveled to New York and if he was aware of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who is also Indian, his office said. 

“Our state employees should be able to go to work and do their jobs without masked agents targeting them for no legitimate reason,” the governor said.

Green card holder detained for five hours

Lawful permanent residents, or noncitizens who are authorized to live in the country, have also been caught up in the arrests. 

Antonio Enriquez, 53, said he was walking to a Melrose Park store last month when federal agents got out of unmarked vehicles and demanded to see his documents. He told the agents they were a few blocks away at his home, pleading “Vamos a mi casa. Let’s go to my house.” 

But the agents ignored him, Enriquez said. A video taken at the scene shows at least three agents pushing Enriquez to the ground and handcuffing him after he tries to pull his arm out of an agent’s grasp. An officer tells a bystander recording that “we’re not trying to hurt anybody, but if you resist, that’s what happens.” 

They took Enriquez to the ICE facility. His daughter, Alexis Gomez, said he was held for six hours until she brought a copy of his green card and Social Security card. She feared that ICE wouldn’t let him go even though he’s in the country legally. 

When he was finally able to leave, he smiled and rushed out of the gated facility to hug his daughters. 

Agents also last month arrested Omar Huerta Cisneros, a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since he was a child, while he was on his way to a grocery store in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. A witness said they zip-tied his hands and drove away in a red minivan. 

It marked the start of a desperate 10-day search by Huerta’s family. The 54-year-old has schizophrenia, a mental illness that often leaves him disoriented and unable to independently care for himself when he isn’t medicated. 

Huerta’s family only learned that he had been arrested Oct. 15 because of a video Edgar Manzo, who was shopping with his wife at the time, posted to Facebook.

“He seemed a little confused but just followed orders,” Manzo said. “He didn’t resist at all.”

Huerta’s sister-in-law, Aracely Favela, said the family called and emailed every office within DHS that they could think of, conveying that Huerta urgently needs his medication. But most of the calls went unanswered, she said. And if someone did pick up, they told her they didn’t know where he was. 

In the meantime, the family combed WhatsApp groups, Facebook posts and drove around the neighborhood looking for Huerta. He doesn’t own a cellphone and they feared he wouldn’t know how to ask for help. 

“He had disappeared,” Favela said. “They disappeared him despite him being here legally.”

It took 10 days for the family to find Huerta wandering the streets of Franklin Park, disoriented, dirty and hungry. Based on what Huerta could recall, the family believes agents released him without a phone call or transportation home. 

Huerta’s family asked that he not be interviewed for the story because of his condition. 

“His story, thankfully, had a happy ending, but I can’t imagine how many don’t,” Favela said. “This could have been really bad for Omar and our family.”

Taking a psychological toll

Aside from legal consequences, the administration’s strategies are also exacting a psychological toll on communities that already have frayed relationships with the government from “great trauma and harm,” NAMI Chicago CEO Matt Davison said.

“They have a very real and understandable reason to be distrustful already,” Davison said. “(It) has taken decades to kind of build up that trust, and it’s being absolutely destroyed by, I can only characterize it as haphazard nonsense fear tactics.”

Maria Greeley said she has felt the need to “lay low” after she was grabbed by three federal agents who zip-tied her hands behind her back in October. She had just finished a double shift at the Beach Bar on Ohio Street. 

Maria Greeley was detained by federal agents in October after leaving work at a downtown bar despite being a U.S. citizen. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

The agents questioned her for an hour and told her she “doesn’t look like” a Greeley before letting her go, she previously relayed to the Tribune. 

Weeks later, Greeley has channeled some of her energy into packing whistles with volunteers and advocating for political change in coming elections.

“I’m glad that they wasted that hour on me and it gave an opportunity for somebody else to get home safe,” she said.

However, she said the encounter has been very stressful for her and her family. She gets anxious “seeing tinted windows, SUVs that have Florida license plates or different out of state license plates.” 

“I do second guess,” Greeley said. “I try not to be on the streets since it happened.”

Diaz, the man detained in Archer Heights, also finds himself looking over his shoulder. Sometimes, he said, he runs through worst-case scenarios in his mind. Like what happens if he’s taken to the Broadview facility or what if he gets deported.

He said he understands agents have a job to do, but he wants them to treat people with more respect. 

“It shouldn’t be OK for us to live in fear,” he said. “No matter your color or your race you shouldn’t have to live in fear.”