Police investigate after CBS Chicago reporter’s truck shot out with a pepper ball outside ICE facility in Broadview

The Broadview Police Department has opened a criminal investigation after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent allegedly shot a pepper ball at a WBBM-Ch. 2 reporter’s truck Sunday morning outside the agency’s holding facility, which has been at the center of heated protests from concerned citizens and politicians.

It happened the same day an independent journalist was released after being detained by federal immigration agents while covering a protest outside the facility Saturday evening.

Broadview police Chief Thomas Mills said in a statement that the Police Department “expects the full cooperation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into our criminal investigation.”

The CBS reporter, Asal Rezaei, posted on social media shortly after the pepper ball incident Sunday, saying, “An ICE agent took a direct shot at my car today. Absolutely unprovoked. My window was open and chemicals went all over my face. Been puking for two hours.”

Mills said the reporter declined medical attention.

According to Rezaei, there were no protesters present when was driving past the facility, about 50 feet from the entrance, to check for activity.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A police report said Rezaei was driving the truck with the driver’s side window down as she approached the entrance on 25th Avenue, CBS News reported. An agent shot a pepper ball from inside of the fence, hitting the side panel on the driver’s side, “causing the chemical agents to engulf the inside of her truck.”

“At this moment it’s not really clear why that officer took a shot at me,” Rezaei said in the police report, according to CBS. “My car has been here several times, although I did not identify myself verbally as a member of the press. There were no protests going on.”

A journalist for Unraveled Press, who had been detained by federal agents at a Broadview protest Saturday night, was released earlier Sunday.

After his release, Steve Held described his experience on the social media app Bluesky.

His first words were, “I’m out, I’m sore.”

Held said he saw four holding rooms: Two small rooms for protesters and two larger rooms to hold ICE and Border Protection detainees. He also said he saw a man in a room with gauze wrapped around his head, appearing to have a serious head wound.

The room he was held in “stank of sweat & pepper ball powder after just a few hours,” the post said. Another room, he said, “appeared dirty, filled with men dressed for labor, trying to get comfortable to sleep in chairs or on the cold floor in the cinder block room.”

While getting processed, he said he noticed the “heartbreaking” look on detainees’ faces.

“We have never witnessed anything like what ICE has unleashed on our communities this week,” Unraveled Press posted on social media Sunday morning.

Gov. JB Pritzker expressed concerns about hostility toward the press at a news conference on Monday afternoon.

“In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists and protesters when unprovoked, what would we call it?” he asked. “If officials marched down streets harassing civilians and demanding their papers, what would we say? I don’t think we’d have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism.”

The Chicago Headline Club, a nonprofit and the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, criticized the actions — including the arrest and instances of journalists being shot “intentionally” with bean bags and chemical munitions — in a Monday statement.

“The Board of Directors of the Chicago Headline Club condemns the targeting of journalists, reporters and photographers covering protests outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agencies,” the statement read.

The group urged ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agents assigned to the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in the Chicago area to “stop this practice immediately.”

“Journalists have a constitutionally-protected right to cover stories as afforded by the First Amendment,” the statement read. “No federal or state agency should interfere with that right either by threats or action taken against working journalists.