Armed, masked federal immigration agents detained one man and chased another through a residential neighborhood in unincorporated Northbrook on Monday, according to witnesses.
More Top Picks Best Monitor Light Bars Under 100
The incidents, which were captured in photos and videos taken by neighborhood residents and viewed by the Tribune, took place on quiet streets early in the morning, feet from school-aged children waiting for the bus.
“There were kids a couple houses down waiting for the bus stop,” said Tea Shehedeh of the neighborhood, called Glenbrook Countryside. She witnessed the events.
People in the area posted in Glenbrook Countryside’s neighborhood Facebook group about Monday’s events. The masked men drove unmarked vehicles and do not appear to have spoken to residents or identified themselves as law enforcement, but the local police agency—the Cook County Sheriff’s office — later received word from the son of the detained man that the incident had been a Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement maneuver.
Glenbrook Countryside is a small neighborhood in Northfield Township, nestled between the Northbrook Court shopping center and the Somme Woods, south of Lake Cook Road.
Shehedeh was driving her kids to school around 7:55 a.m. Monday when she watched a trio of dark-colored vehicles overtake and “box in” a black Acura sedan headed south on Cottonwood Road, near its intersection with Beechnut Road.
She says the pursuing cars drove well over the posted 20-mile-per-hour speed limit on Cottonwood, and one car drove “erratically” as it overtook and cut off the Acura.
Shehedeh said she saw armed masked men exit the unmarked cars and approach the driver’s side window of the Acura. She was “waved on” by one of the masked agents and did not witness the driver of the Acura, who she said appeared to be of Mexican descent, exit the vehicle.
“I was kind of frantic because I had a friend on Friday be assaulted by an ICE agent in Skokie,” she said. “Seeing them face-to-face, I was like, ‘oh my God.’”
Cook County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Matthew Walberg said the son of the detained man told sheriff’s deputies later that morning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had called him to say they had taken his father into custody.
ICE does not communicate with the sheriff’s office about their enforcement operations, Walberg said. Illinois law enforcement agencies are barred from collaborating with federal agents for civil immigration enforcement under the TRUST Act.
A resident who asked to be identified only Michelle K. for privacy reasons, who lives immediately south of Cottonwood and Beechnut, said her daughter and their neighbor were waiting for the bus on Michelle K.’s front lawn when the agents arrived.
She watched a man, who she said appeared to be Hispanic, be taken from the Acura by the masked captors and placed into one of the unmarked cars without incident; his identity remains unknown as of Tuesday.
“It happened really quickly,” she said.
She shared videos with the Tribune of two masked men wearing bulletproof vests standing next to a blue SUV in front of her house, with the Acura parked up the street. Neither man appears to display insignia identifying them as police or federal authorities on their vests.
A yellow school bus can be seen driving past in one video; neighborhood residents who spoke to the Tribune said that bus would have been transporting elementary school students to Westmoor School in Northbrook, part of Northbrook School District 28.
The story did not end with the taking of the Acura driver. The blue SUV driven by the captors appeared to depart, Michelle K. said, but minutes later, someone in a black BMW sedan arrived, possibly to pick up the abandoned Acura, and the blue SUV quickly reappeared.
Another video recorded by Michelle K. shows the black BMW’s driver interacting briefly with a masked agent before returning to the BMW and driving off at high speed south on Cottonwood, with the blue SUV following.
Michelle K. said a Cook County sheriff’s deputy later told her the masked agents were likely staking out the Acura in order to detain whoever came to pick it up. Because the Glenbrook Countryside neighborhood is in an unincorporated area, Cook County sheriffs serve as its police force.
“It’s exactly what you’ve seen reposted everywhere,” she said. “It’s just weird to see it in your front yard on a Monday.”
Sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene around 8:17 a.m., according to a police report, where they met with the son of the detained man when he arrived to pick up the abandoned Acura.
Walberg said the sheriff’s office had no additional information about the ICE agents’ pursuit of the BMW driver.
As of midday Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had not responded to the Tribune’s request to confirm whether DHS, Border Patrol or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were active in unincorporated Northbrook on Monday.
Northfield Township trustee and Glenbrook Countryside resident Vincent Pace said he arrived on-scene at 8:05 a.m., shortly after the masked agents departed, and spoke with sheriff’s deputies when they arrived shortly thereafter.
He also spoke with two people who said they knew the detainee and who arrived around 9:30 a.m. to pick up the Acura. Pace was unable to confirm the identity of the man taken by the masked agents, though a deputy told him the Acura was registered to a Palatine address.
“As a resident, I’m of course extremely unhappy to have armed, unidentified, masked men speeding around the neighborhood and doing aggressive boxing-in maneuvers, especially at precisely the time when children are going to school,” Pace wrote in a text message.
More Top Picks Best Cpap Machines
“As a trustee, I question the point of this policy of aggressiveness. The previous administration deported many more than Trump’s first administration, and all without masked, armed men in front of our children’s school buses. Safe to say doing it like this isn’t just about enforcing immigration law.”
Northbrook School District 28 did not respond to a Tuesday morning request for comment.
Some neighborhood residents expressed shock that the federal government’s immigration crackdown appeared to have come to their community.
Residents of Glenbrook Countryside described it to the Tribune as quiet, upper-middle-class – and predominantly white. A small number of Eastern European emigres have inhabited the community for years.
“I thought of it as just live and let live, and nobody gets in trouble,” said Sandra Gran, 77, who’s lived on Cottonwood Road for 31 years.
Ben, a Cottonwood Road resident who declined to give his last name, said the neighborhood rarely saw law enforcement activity, except to police speeding drivers.
“Once in a while the sheriff’s office drives through to see we don’t get any cut-throughs,” he said, referring to the use of the neighborhood as a shortcut to avoid the intersection of Lake Cook Road and South Waukegan Road.
Road signs on either side of Cottonwood Road notify drivers of the 20-mile-per-hour speed limit, with bright yellow SLOW – CHILDREN signs posted beneath.
Richard Requena contributed to this report.