The Evanston police officers stepped out of their squad cars and into a pressure cooker.
By the time they arrived at the normally subdued south Evanston intersection that Halloween afternoon, a car crash involving a red sedan and an SUV full of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had devolved into violence and chaos.
The sedan’s driver and two other people — all U.S. citizens — already had been detained. One of them, a young Chicago man, was captured on witness video being wrestled to the pavement and punched in the head while handcuffed.
With their body-worn cameras rolling, Evanston officers encountered armed federal agents surrounded by an angry crowd shouting for the three citizens to be released. Some chastised agents for being in their neighborhood. Some pleaded with cops to do something about the agent seen hitting the young Chicago man and a second agent, also caught on cellphone footage, who repeatedly pointed his handgun at protesters.
Others ignored officers’ attempts to clear the street. Among them was Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, a candidate for Congress, who admonished police for allowing agents to leave the area.
“The EPD was apparently facilitating the departure of ICE with Evanston residents who were kidnapped,” Biss told a police commander in one body-worn camera recording. “It’s unacceptable.”
That recording is among the roughly seven hours of police body-worn camera footage and 911 call audio released by the Evanston Police Department last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Taken together, the footage offers a new look into one of the more troubling clashes between federal agents and community members that broke out across Chicago’s Northwest Side and nearby suburbs on Oct. 31 — clashes that have become a hallmark of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz.
‘That’s when people started to converge’
As has been the case with collisions involving federal immigration enforcement agents in the Chicago area, there are conflicting accounts of the car crash that eventually brought police to Asbury and Oakton streets.
Body-worn camera footage from Evanston police Sgt. Jodie Hart includes a brief conversation with a Border Patrol agent, who identified himself as the team lead. The team lead said the agents’ Chevrolet Tahoe was being tailed by a red Acura, which an Evanston police report identifies as having been driven by a Chicago woman, whom the Tribune could not reach for comment.
“When we tried to make a maneuver to get away from the vehicle,” Parsons told Hart, “she hit us from behind with her car.”
In separate body-camera footage, multiple witnesses told police that agents intentionally slammed on the brakes, which caused the crash.
One witness is shown on body-camera video saying she saw four agents dressed in tactical gear exit the Tahoe after the crash and pull the Chicago woman from her car.
The agents “threw her to the ground,” the witness told police, and then “picked her up and threw her in their car. That’s when people started to converge.”
Evanston resident Jennifer Moriarty was among that group. In a livestream interview with Biss earlier this month, she said she grabbed her cellphone to record agents on top of the Acura’s driver, who was face down on the ground.
“As soon as I walked up, an agent grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the ground and was on top of me,” she told Biss.
‘Get back or I’ll shoot you’
Widely circulated cellphone video shows a red-bearded agent in a tactical vest, with black sunglasses on his face, running around to the Tahoe’s passenger side. A bystander scatters as the agent grabs the Acura driver, who is standing, hands cuffed behind her back, in front of the open rear passenger door.
The agent attempts to hoist the woman into the SUV, then stops to point his handgun at the crowd. Less than a minute later, he barks at one man: “Get back or I’ll shoot you!” He then reaches for his holstered handgun a second time and points it toward protesters.
Shortly after Evanston police arrived, one officer’s camera recorded a man who approached to ask about pressing charges against a federal agent “who pointed a gun at my face.” The man, whose face is blurred in the clip released by the city, appears to show the officer a video on his cellphone.
“That’s where he said, ‘Step back or I will shoot you,’” he tells the officer. “And that’s where he pointed the gun at me, sir.”
That agent is seen in Evanston police body camera footage in the Tahoe’s driver seat.
When reached by phone last week, the red-bearded agent told the Tribune he didn’t think CBP rules allowed him to speak with reporters.
The frightening encounter between the agent and the public was included in a scathing 233-page critique of federal immigration agent tactics issued by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis as part of her preliminary injunction this month against agents’ use of force during Operation Midway Blitz. Ellis also expressed doubts about the veracity of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s accounts of clashes with bystanders.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay last week, calling Ellis’ injunction “overbroad.”
In an emailed statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin praised the 7th Circuit ruling as “a win for the rule of law and for the safety of every law enforcement officer.
“Throughout Operation Midway Blitz, rioters and other violent criminals have threatened our law enforcement officers, thrown rocks, bottles, and fireworks at them, slashed the tires of their vehicles, rammed them, ambushed them, and even shot at them. Despite these real dangers, our law enforcement shows incredible restraint and prudence in their exercise of force to protect the lives of their fellow officers and fellow Americans.”
McLaughlin’s statement did not address questions about the red-bearded agent’s actions in Evanston or the Tribune’s request to interview him.
‘An absolute bald-faced lie’
McLaughlin’s statement also did not address questions about an agent’s use of force against the young Chicago man whose violent arrest was captured on video.
The man’s father, who asked for anonymity to protect his son and himself, told the Pioneer Press that his son was driving behind the Acura when the crash happened. He said his son saw agents aggressively detaining the Acura’s driver and tried to intervene by tapping an agent on the shoulder. That’s when another federal agent hit him, the father said.
“You know, I said to my boy, ‘you can never touch a police person’ … but I am conflicted,” his father said. “My problem with the whole deal is that when he’s on the ground and he’s subdued, you don’t beat him. … That’s when it goes over the line, in my opinion.”
Librarian Kerry Littel recorded video of the arrest, previously telling the Tribune that she saw an agent kneeling on the man’s back and apparently punching him on the side of the head while residents shouted, “He can’t breathe!”
“They had yanked his shoes off, they were shoving him on the ground multiple times,” Littel said. “It got to the level where they punched him. They kicked him. They slammed his head on the ground.”
After video of the violent takedown circulated on social media and in the media, the Department of Homeland Security posted on X that the young man “grabbed the agent’s genitals and squeezed them,” which is why the agent “delivered several defensive strikes to the agitator to free his genitals from the agitator’s vise.”
In her ruling, Judge Ellis noted that witness video did not clearly show the man grabbing the agent’s genitals, and that DHS did not provide evidence to support the allegation.
The young man’s father had harsher words for the agency’s statement, calling it “an absolute bald-faced lie, and the video proves it’s a lie. My son’s hands never went by the guy’s genitals. … It’s just ridiculous.”
The father told Pioneer Press he supports Trump “in many ways,” but he doesn’t support the massive sweep of people based on their ethnicity.
“It’s craziness, and I think what set me over the edge was they put a statement from DHS that said that my son grabbed the guy’s nuts,” he said. “I’m very conflicted, because I voted for Trump. I like many of the policies. I just believe this has gone way too far, and it’s not what he said it was going to be.”
‘Amid the chaos’
All three detainees were in the Tahoe’s back seat when Evanston police first arrived at Asbury and Oakton. More than a dozen officers were called to the scene that afternoon, body-camera footage shows.
Some take statements from witnesses and email addresses to send a link to upload cellphone video. One helps a man who said he’d been pepper-sprayed by agents, telling him to take off his glasses in case they’re coated in residue from the chemical agent.
“Bastards,” the man says through a cough. “I didn’t provoke them.”
The first task, though, facing most of the officers appeared to be keeping the angry crowd off the street so federal agents could leave.
“We just want you to be safe,” one officer says to protesters. “Please, guys.”
A sergeant uses his squad car’s public address system to order the crowd onto the sidewalk: “Get out of the street and let the Evanston Police Department handle it. If you put your hands on a police officer, you will be arrested. Get out of the street now.”
As the Chevy Tahoe left the area, footage captures that same sergeant yelling for the crowd following it on Asbury to get out of the street. At the front of the crowd is Biss, who barks back: “No!”
Biss told the Pioneer Press in a statement that he was grateful for the Police Department’s role “amid the chaos.”
“As someone who was at the scene, I know how volatile the situation was, and I appreciate the professionalism EPD brought to a rapidly unfolding crisis,” he said. “Like many in our community, I remain frustrated that local law enforcement has limited authority to intervene when federal agents behave recklessly. Even so, I believe EPD acted within its lawful powers to safeguard Evanstonians.”
The mayor, who is running in the Democratic primary for the 9th Congressional District seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, took a different tone with officers at the scene.
On a recording captured by the body-worn camera of Cmdr. Anthony Correa, Biss tells the commander that EPD committed a “catastrophic mistake” in assisting federal officers when they cleared the road.
“You didn’t have to let them out. … You helped them,” Biss says.
Correa also asks Biss to step off the road, which he refuses to do.
A city spokesperson declined to answer questions on whether the mayor was given additional information after his exchange with Correa that could have changed his mind about the Police Department’s response.
Biss did not respond to repeated requests for comment beyond his statement, deferring questions to the city of Evanston. HIs statement credited city policy “and the quick thinking of our officers” who were able to learn the names of two CBP agents “whose violent actions injured residents and traumatized our community.” That information, he said, has been shared with the Illinois attorney general’s office and the Illinois Accountability Commission “as initial steps in the pursuit of justice.”
The attorney general’s office did not respond to emailed questions about whether it has opened any investigation into the Evanston confrontation.
As for the three people detained, they spent hours in the back of the agents’ Tahoe. The SUV stopped at Skokie’s Northshore Sculpture Park. There, Evanston police officers spoke with an agent to fill out a crash report and asked the people in custody for their names, addresses and emergency contacts.
“What are you going to do to help us?” Moriarty asks Sgt. Daniel Keeler, whose body-camera footage was part of the records reviewed by the Tribune.
“I mean, at this point, this information is going to be passed along to the Evanston Police Department,” Keeler responds.
Moriarty later said she and her fellow detainees were driven around Rogers Park and Evanston. More than once, she said, agents slammed on the brakes in an apparent attempt to cause a collision.
Eventually, all three were taken to the FBI office on Chicago’s West Side. Moriarty said no one took her fingerprints or photograph. Her Miranda rights were not read.
She and the other three detainees were released without charges.
