Aurora resident Elizabeth Pineda said she has been patrolling for federal immigration agents for a few months now, often amid her daily activities — dropping her children off at school, going to the store.
On Wednesday morning, Pineda, 33, said she dropped her three older children off at school and was checking for sightings of federal agents with her younger two children, 3 and 1. Later that morning, she said, she drove by El Paso Grande, a grocery store on the city’s East Side, and heard whistles, a popular tactic used to alert an area of possible federal immigration enforcement activity.
Pineda pulled into the parking lot behind a car believed to be a federal agent’s, and was warned to get out of the way, she said. Soon after, her car was hit with pepper-spray projectiles, she said.
Wednesday’s incident in Aurora came just a day after a judge ordered Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino to start coming to court every day to describe any confrontations his immigration enforcement officers have had with the public, as allegations have mounted that agents are indiscriminately throwing tear gas and using inappropriate force against residents and reporters.
A federal appeals court, however, ruled Wednesday that Bovino does not have to appear daily in court to brief a federal judge on the latest uses of force in the federal immigration crackdown, at least for now.
And the situation is unfolding nearly two months after President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced that it had begun a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago, dubbing it “Operation Midway Blitz.”
According to Pineda and a resident who recorded the incident, the situation in Aurora involved cars pulling up behind a federal agent’s car and ultimately led to Pineda’s vehicle getting hit with the pepper-spray projectiles, she said.
“I thought they were … trying to break my windshield, because of the noise that it was making,” Pineda said on Wednesday afternoon.
A Facebook video provided by Aurora resident Elena Perez, who was in the parking lot, shows agents restraining Pineda as Perez asks if she can go help the children.
“I’m not threatening you,” Perez is heard saying to agents in the video.
An agent allows her to go to Pineda’s car, where she comforts the woman’s crying children.
“We’re just trying to protect our community,” Perez, who has recently gotten involved in the protest efforts, said later on Wednesday. “That’s all we’re here for. We were not a threat to (them). We just want to let people know … not to be afraid to come out, that there’s people that care.”
Perez’s video shows Pineda being held by a man outside of the car but ultimately being let go.
“I was not instigating anything,” Pineda, who said she is a U.S. citizen, said. “But, at the end of the day, I feel like them detaining me was saving one of the employees to El Paso.”
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in an email late Thursday afternoon that the incident occurred during a “targeted immigration enforcement operation” in Aurora.
McLaughlin wrote in the email that, during the incident, federal agents “were boxed in by agitators in two vehicles” and that the drivers refused to answer to law enforcement commands to move, adding that “ICE used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect (its) officers.”
“It is reckless, unlawful and extremely irresponsible for parents to interfere with law enforcement activities but especially when they are accompanied by children,” McLaughlin said.
Pineda is not the only Aurora protestor who’s had an encounter with federal agents as the federal administration’s immigration crackdown goes on. Just last weekend, two protestors were detained outside an elementary school in Aurora, according to past reporting.
Pineda said that her window was down at the time of the incident, and that she began coughing as she pulled away. She took herself and her children to the emergency room later that day, but said that the family was OK following the incident.
But she’s going to take a break from some of the rapid response efforts she’s been a part of recently.
“I mean, I obviously have my kids,” Pineda said. “If I keep doing this, it’s going to be from (a)far.”
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
