US citizen beaten and injured by ICE agents in Chicago suburb after mistaken identity
ICE agents in Evanston, Illinois attacked a Black US citizen they mistook for a fugitive, leaving him bloodied. Two eyewitnesses described the incident to the AP.
Black US citizen left bloodied after ICE agents mistake him for fugitive in Evanston
A US citizen was beaten and injured by federal immigration agents in Evanston, Illinois, on Sunday after they mistook him for a fugitive they were pursuing, theguardian.com reports. Two eyewitnesses described the agents pinning the man to the ground, striking him, and then walking away once they realised they had the wrong person.
Bystander Ryan Garton, 56, told the Associated Press he was driving home when he saw two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents restraining the man on the side of the road. He pulled over and began recording on his phone.
"His upper right eye socket and temple were swollen as if he had been punched," Garton said. The man's face, he added, was scraped "as if it had been ground into the sidewalk."
Garton said one agent had his knee on the man's back and was "beating up on him" while the man shouted: "I'm a citizen, leave me alone." Around five bystanders were yelling at the agents to stop. Garton said he urged the officer to step back so he could check the man's injuries. When the agent did so, Garton said he noticed bloodstains in the shape of handprints on the man's shirt.
The victim told Garton he had been walking to a pharmacy to collect a prescription when the agents approached him.
Michael Lipson, who owns a store across the street from where the incident took place, said he also saw the officers wrestle the man to the ground as he repeatedly shouted that he was a citizen. The man's face looked "badly messed up," Lipson told the AP. The officers went through cards and papers from the man's wallet before leaving them scattered on the road. Lipson placed his sweatshirt on the ground for the man to rest on while Garton checked his condition.
The confrontation took place at approximately 10am on Sunday near Howard Street and Dodge Avenue in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said in a statement that officers had "encountered an individual who resembled the target" of an enforcement operation. "The individual was given lawful commands but was not cooperative and refused to identify himself," the statement said. It added that agents "left the scene without further incident" once the man identified himself, and that when officers offered him assistance, "he refused."
Evanston police said the victim reported head, face and neck injuries. According to a police statement, the agents left the scene claiming a crowd had gathered and that they feared protesters would attack them. One agent was also reported to have a bloodied hand, which he told Evanston police he sustained when the man resisted efforts to handcuff him.
The victim was treated at St Francis hospital for minor injuries, according to Daniel Biss, the Democratic mayor of Evanston, who posted about the incident on X. Biss said the city's police department "continues to investigate the situation, and we will remain vigilant about federal activities."
In a separate post on Wednesday, Biss condemned the Trump administration's immigration enforcement campaign, which has included enforcement "surges" into Democratic-run cities and states and resulted in a record 50,000 arrests in July alone. "This violence must end. We need to take Evanston's energy and fight to Washington to abolish ICE, hold the Trump administration accountable, and end the funding of these brutal invasions into our cities," Biss wrote.
The Evanston incident was one of three separate events involving federal immigration officers on the same Sunday. In Austin, Texas, an ICE agent shot and seriously wounded a 28-year-old Venezuelan man during a traffic stop while he was working as a DoorDash delivery driver. In Michigan, authorities are investigating the death of a 36-year-old Guatemalan national who crashed his car into a tree at high speed after reportedly attempting to flee immigration officers seeking to detain him.
Source: Google News MT