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A migration operation by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) unleashed chaos this Monday in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago, where outraged residents confronted hooded and armed federal agents amid protests, snowballs, and pepper spray.
According to reports from Noticias Telemundo, residents spontaneously organized to prevent what they deemed arbitrary detentions, while ICE agents attempted to enter several homes in search of immigrants allegedly without documentation.
"We don’t want ICE to take innocent people away", shouted the neighbors, according to images shared on social media.
The agents responded to the crowd with pepper spray, while some people threw snowballs in protest.
The incident left dozens of detainees, according to organizations such as the País Sin Antecedentes project, which documents cases of unjust deportations.
"He was my friend, he wasn't a criminal. They deported him just because they wanted to," said a woman about a childhood friend who was deported.
Data revealed by the Deportation Project at the University of California, Berkeley, stemming from a lawsuit against ICE, shows that between January 20 and October 15, 2025, over 75,000 people with no criminal records were arrested, which represents more than a third of the 220,000 detentions carried out during the early months of Donald Trump's administration.
ICE, however, maintains that 70% of its arrests involve individuals accused or convicted of crimes in the United States.
It is unclear how many of those detained have been deported, but at least 22,000 signed their voluntary departure from the country, according to the same documents cited by the television channel.
The report also reveals that the Border Patrol has participated in coordinated raids in various cities, which experts describe as a lack of transparency and a campaign of intimidation targeting migrant communities.
"They want people to be afraid to go out on the street or to go to work," denounced an analyst consulted by Telemundo. "It's a terror strategy aimed at paralyzing immigrants."
According to the report, ICE has averaged 824 daily detentions under the Trump Administration, more than double the daily average recorded during the previous government of Joe Biden, which in 2024 was around 320.
Approximately 90% of the detainees are men, mainly Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, which has directly impacted the construction sector and other industries that employ migrant workers.
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