Federal immigration agents pointed rifles at bystanders and tried to break down doors as they took over an apartment complex in unincorporated Northbrook on Wednesday.
The immigration enforcement action, which took place over the course of around 50 minutes Wednesday morning, Nov. 5, led to the arrest of a man living in the Salem Walk apartments and involved more than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and an armored car, according to eyewitness accounts and photos and videos shared with the Tribune.
“ICE basically held… 90 apartments hostage while they’re trying to get to one man,” said Bobbie Montgomery, a Salem Walk resident.
ICE said in communications with the 911 Communications Center around 9:20 a.m. that they had a warrant to arrest an “armed and barricaded subject” at the Salem Walk apartments, according to a Cook County sheriff’s spokesperson.
The events of Wednesday Nov. 5 were the second time in a three day-period that immigration agents arrested someone in unincorporated Northbrook, following the Monday arrest of a man in the Glenbrook Countryside neighborhood.
ICE agents on Wednesday eventually detained Alan Eduardo Garcia, and said Thursday in a news release he has had previous arrests and convictions for domestic battery, disorderly conduct, battery causing bodily injury, aggravated battery against a handicapped or pregnant woman, felony strangulation and unlawful use of a firearm.
A check of Cook County court records found that Garcia pleaded guilty in December 2022 to a charge of aggravated battery to a pregnant and/or handicapped person, and served two years of probation with conditions, such as having no contact with his victim. He completed that sentence in December 2024, and was also fined $1,074.
An online check of court records for nearby Lake County, the 19th Judicial Circuit, did not turn up any cases related to Garcia, though a court representative noted the spelling of his middle name could have been inputted differently in their records.
The apartment complex sits along Milwaukee Avenue near the eastern border of Mount Prospect.
Montgomery awoke around 8:50 a.m. Wednesday to the sound of a crash outside her bedroom window in the 3600 block of Salem Walk.
Looking outside, she saw her neighbor’s car, a black Mercedes sedan, halfway out of its parking spot and wedged between two SUVs. She video-called her husband, Kendrick Smith, and went outside to check on her car, which was blocked in by the Mercedes.
She found masked ICE agents in the parking lot, with long guns pointed at apartment windows and the rear exterior door of the neighboring stairwell. Montgomery said the agents might have blocked in her neighbor’s (Garcia’s) car as he pulled out of his parking spot, after which he fled upstairs to his apartment through a stairwell.
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As Montgomery approached her car, she said several agents turned around and trained their guns on her. She was shoeless and in her nightgown.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an email that ICE officers saw Garcia enter his car and that he attempted to strike their vehicles and flee, then abandoned the car and fled into his apartment. Given his “violent history and potential to be armed,” they said, ICE officers “received authorization to breach the apartment.” The ICE statement said Garcia climbed onto a third-floor balcony, “where officers saved his life by preventing him from jumping” and arrested him.
The statement said ICE officers had previously tried to arrest him but “lost sight of him due to his reckless driving at speeds over 100 miles per hour.”
On Wednesday, Montgomery watched as the agents unsuccessfully tried to break down the stairwell door with a battering ram.
Smith, who followed along on the video call, said he marveled at their ineptitude. “The door opens outwards,” he explained.
Montgomery said that as agents pursued Garcia, they aimed their guns toward other residents who entered the parking lot to confront them.
The agents told residents their target was dangerous and that they were protecting neighbors.
“Well, he’s never pointed guns at us,” Montgomery retorted.
Agents wearing military helmets and armored vests atop jeans and sneakers also congregated on the lawn in front of the apartment building and blocked traffic on a private road that partially encircles the complex.
There, ICE agents were confronted by Rapid Response team members and residents who filmed them and shouted at them.
“That’s why you come this way, to harass, not to protest?” one agent wearing Vans and carrying a paintball-type gun can be heard saying in a video shared by Northfield Township elected official and Rapid Response team member Caryn Fliegler.
“Are you threatening me? Are you threatening me? I want to ask you if you’re threatening me,” another agent can be heard saying as he walks out of frame towards an off-camera resident. “Then step back.”
Thirteen agents can be seen entering and exiting vehicles and crossing the complex’s lawn in one video shared by Fliegler.
An armored car marked with “Special Response Team” and the Department of Homeland Security’s logo can also be seen driving toward the standoff on the private road in another video.
Montgomery believes she saw the man, presumably Garcia, walk out of the stairwell door on his own volition, but the rear interior door of his apartment showed signs of being kicked in when a Tribune reporter visited later that afternoon.Video shared with the Tribune by another resident appears to show an ICE agent standing on the front balcony of the man’s apartment and signaling fellow agents on the lawn.
When the Tribune reporter knocked on Garcia’s apartment door Wednesday afternoon, a woman said through the door she did not want to speak to news media.
Neither Smith nor Montgomery said they interacted much with the detained man, Garcia, but both said he’d been living in the building for years without issue. Montgomery said she had often seen him clearing snow from his and his neighbors’ parking spots after snowplows came through in the winter.
“How’s the guy dangerous?” asked Smith, a former Marine who has resided at Salem Walk for 23 years. “He’s been living here for years. If he wanted to do anything in the complex, he would have done it by now.”
Cook County Sheriff’s deputies, who Smith and Montgomery say frequently patrol the apartment complex, responded to the reports of federal agents in military-style uniforms and carrying rifles around 8:50 a.m., according to Cook County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Matt Walberg.
Officers left the area after confirming the agents were with ICE, and later returned to the area around 9:20 a.m. to provide traffic control at ICE’s request, Walberg wrote in an email to the Tribune.
“The Sheriff’s Office was not notified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement prior to the operation and was not participating in any immigration enforcement,” Walberg wrote.
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Illinois law enforcement agencies are barred from collaborating with federal agents for civil immigration enforcement under the TRUST Act.