- Federal agents deployed tear gas in upscale Chicago Lakeview, gassing peaceful onlookers during an Operation Midway Blitz arrest.
- Escalation mirrors nationwide tactics—tear gas, pepper balls, unmarked vans—drawing legal scrutiny and community outrage in blue cities.
- Collateral harm: schools, apartments, and playgrounds exposed; local leaders demand accountability as protests and health impacts mount.
CHICAGO — In a scene that could have been ripped from a dystopian novel but feels all too real in 2025’s polarized America, federal immigration agents unleashed tear gas on a crowd of neighbors in Chicago’s upscale Lakeview neighborhood Friday afternoon.
The incident, captured in a raw video circulating widely on social media, shows an agent casually rolling a canister out of a vehicle window as the car reverses away from a group of onlookers armed with nothing more threatening than whistles and bicycles.
What started as a routine immigration sweep under Operation Midway Blitz has ignited fresh fury, highlighting how President Donald Trump’s ramped-up deportation efforts are clashing with everyday life in communities far from the southern border.
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The video, first shared by independent outlet Unraveled Press on Bluesky, depicts the moment U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers gassed a gathering of residents who had assembled after what witnesses described as a “kidnapping” — ICE’s term for an arrest, but one that landed hard in this tight-knit, affluent pocket of the city.
Lakeview, known for its trendy cafes, comedy clubs, and family-friendly vibe, isn’t the stereotype of an immigration enforcement hotspot.
Yet agents detained one man just blocks from an elite private school where Chicago’s power players send their kids, and nabbed another outside the iconic Laugh Factory, a venue that’s hosted everyone from Richard Pryor to modern stand-up stars.
The Chicago Tribune reported that the operation zeroed in on a predominantly white community where immigrant workers — often in service jobs — keep the neighborhood humming.
Local leaders didn’t hold back. Ald. Bennett Lawson, a Democrat representing the ward, blasted the tactics in no uncertain terms.
“ICE’s un-American and undemocratic tactics of fear and intimidation in our neighborhoods are a direct attack on everything Chicago stands for — inclusion, compassion and love,” Lawson told the Tribune.
“We have a proud history of welcoming people of all backgrounds in our community and our commitment to those principles are stronger now than ever.”
His words echo a sentiment bubbling up across the city: that federal overreach is poisoning the well in places least expecting it.
Immigration Enforcement Intensifies in Blue States
This isn’t an isolated flare-up.
Chicago has become ground zero for ICE’s intensified operations since Trump returned to the White House, with agents deploying tear gas, pepper balls, and even body-slamming protesters in a string of confrontations that have left judges scrambling and residents reeling.
Just last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis grilled DHS officials in court over why agents keep ignoring her October order banning tear gas against non-threatening journalists and bystanders.
In one hearing, Border Patrol’s Chicago sector chief, Jason Harvick, defended three rapid-fire deployments of gas outside a Broadview ICE processing facility, insisting 12 minutes between the first two bursts was plenty of warning.
But Ellis wasn’t buying it, pointing to viral videos of agents hurling canisters into crowds without clear provocation.
The fallout has been visceral. On October 14, during a raid near a South Side grocery store, tear gas wafted straight into Funston Elementary School, forcing first-grade teacher Maria Heavener to slam windows shut mid-lesson as kids coughed and helicopters thumped overhead.
“We definitely didn’t expect what happened,” Heavener later recounted. “We didn’t expect them to throw tear gas right outside of our school building.”
Parents and community members formed human chains to escort students home safely afterward, a makeshift shield against the chaos.
In another ugly episode on October 12 in Albany Park, agents gassed frustrated residents mere feet from an arrest scene, with Harvick admitting the crowd’s outrage — but not their eggs, bricks, or “metal objects” — justified the response.
Experts tracking these raids say the pattern screams escalation.
Videos show plainclothes agents in unmarked vans swarming streets, ramming cars during chases, and firing rubber projectiles at reporters — tactics CNN described as a deliberate push to rack up arrests, even if it means collateral damage like a cabinet shop in Broadview where workers got hit by stray pepper balls and tear gas seeped into warehouses.
A CBS Chicago reporter, Asal Rezaei, ended up puking for two hours after a pepper ball smashed her car window from 50 feet away.
DHS insists it’s all in self-defense amid a “growing and dangerous trend” of resistance, but critics point to a lack of discipline: No agents have faced repercussions for these incidents, per testimony in Ellis’s courtroom.
Zoom out, and Chicago’s mess looks like a sequel to Portland’s nightmare script from earlier this year — and even back in 2021.
In Oregon’s largest city, nightly protests outside the ICE facility on South Macadam Avenue have turned into a grim ritual: Federal agents firing tear gas, pepper balls, and flash grenades into crowds of hundreds, often without warning.
On October 18, after a massive “No Kings” rally drew 40,000 peaceful demonstrators downtown, the energy soured fast at the ICE site.
By 4:30 p.m., officers emerged in gas masks, launching multiple rounds that sent protesters scrambling for saline rinses and gas masks; sparks from the canisters even sparked small fires in the drizzle.
Portland Police arrested three that night on charges ranging from assault to harassment, but federal agents did the heavy dispersing.
Scrutiny Grows as Children’s Playground Get Exposed
The human toll is mounting. South Waterfront residents report tear gas infiltrating apartments through AC units, leaving eyes burning and lungs raw.
One neighbor likened it to “quintessential Portland” — a mix of defiance and absurdity — but others aren’t laughing.
The facility sits next door to a K-8 school that relocated in August partly due to the constant threat of chemical munitions, and across from veteran housing.
Environmental tests have flagged elevated cyanide and heavy metals in nearby soil and water, remnants from repeated deployments, prompting Oregon lawmakers to demand DHS pull back.
Portland’s city leaders are fighting fire with bureaucracy. In September, officials launched a probe into permit violations after discovering ICE was holding overnight detentions — a no-go under local rules — and threatened eviction.
Mayor Keith Wilson called it a chance for accountability, though federal override looms large. Zoning tweaks could slap massive impact fees on the building to cover cleanup costs, potentially scaring off landlords from leasing to ICE.
A petition to revoke the facility’s permit has nearly 18,000 signatures, fueled by over 100 straight days of protests.
These clashes aren’t new; they’re a grim echo of 2021’s unrest.
Back then, DHS sent 755 officers to Portland at a $12 million clip to shield federal buildings from racial justice protests, but a scathing Inspector General report faulted the feds for sloppy planning: Inconsistent uniforms, spotty radio comms, and just seven out of 63 reviewed officers trained in crowd control.
Tear gas rained down nightly near the ICE center and courthouse, contaminating playgrounds at Cottonwood School of Civics and Science — so much so that Multnomah County commissioners begged the Biden administration to ban it around schools and vets’ housing.
The residue lingers: Higher toxins in the Willamette River, kids wheezing from playground fallout.
What’s Next for America?
Four years on, the playbook feels unchanged, just the faces and dates swapped.
Trump’s National Guard threats — paused by courts but simmering — have only amped the tension, with Judge Karin Immergut ruling last month that such deployments would “inflame protests” and wound Oregon’s sovereignty.
In Chicago, City Council member Andre Vasquez is rallying workshops on immigrant rights, urging folks to push back without getting caught in the gas clouds.
As winter looms, the question hangs heavy: How long until these neighborhoods — from Lakeview’s comedy stages to Portland’s waterfront parks — become permanent battlegrounds?
For now, the canisters keep rolling, and the outrage keeps building. In a city built on welcoming the world, that’s a bitter pill no amount of saline can wash away.
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