An Evanston woman spoke publicly last week about her experience being detained by U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials in an altercation gone awry on Halloween in the northern suburb.
Jennifer Moriarty told her story to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss in a livestream on Biss’s campaign website on Wednesday.
Moriarty, who said she was a U.S. citizen, was one of three people who were handcuffed and loaded by federal agents into their vehicle after a civilian woman in a red car and a federal vehicle were involved in a car crash.
Moriarty said she tried to film the aftermath of the car crash and federal agents detained her.
Video of the crash’s aftermath shows an agent wrestled and pinned a young man to the ground, with the agent’s knee on the young man’s back, beating him and dragging his face on the pavement. Agents loaded him into the vehicle along with Moriarty and the woman in the red car who had been in the crash.
Moriarty said the young man badly needed medical attention, but that agents gave none, even after one agent identified himself as a trained paramedic.
Since Oct. 31, the day of the crash, Evanston residents who witnessed the crash and violence at Asbury Avenue and Oakton Street have formally accused the federal government of excessive force, and the Evanston Police Department has launched an investigation into the violence and traffic accident.
“They are absolutely afraid of communities that are organized,” Moriarty said of the agents that detained her and the two others. “Every time the (car) horns started blowing or whistles started blowing and people recognize them, you could see the level of anxiety and rage kind of take over them.”
“They just didn’t understand that our community is not going to put up with it. Neither is Chicago,” she said.
“‘They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”
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After the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents put Moriarty and the two others into the back seat of their vehicle, they drove them for hours between Evanston and Rogers Park before driving to FBI offices on Chicago’s West Side, over 11 miles from Asbury and Oakton in Evanston. The three were never charged with a crime or read their Miranda rights, according to Moriarty, who called the detainment an abduction.A DHS spokesperson, however, told Pioneer Press that the three were arrested due to the violence against federal law enforcement. DHS did not respond to further inquiries, directing questions to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
During the ride in the vehicle, the young man who had been beaten appeared to be sick and ready to throw up, Moriarty said, prompting her to point his head at the agents. “I said, ‘Do not do it on me. They created this **** mess, they can clean it all up.'”
In response to Biss’ question about how scary the detainment was, Moriarty said, “I wasn’t afraid. I was very angry.”
“I’m not afraid because, you know, I’m a woman. I’m a citizen and I’m white… I always knew I would be home,” she said. “The anger was my controlling emotion through the entire experience.”
DHS and witnesses to the traffic accident have conflicting accounts as to who caused the accident at the Evanston intersection of Oakton and Asbury. A DHS spokesperson said that a red vehicle was tailgating federal agents, and when agents tried to make a U-turn, the red car crashed into the Border Patrol vehicle.
Moriarty, and other observers of the crash, say otherwise, insisting that the federal agents slammed on their brakes to create an accident with a young woman who was driving the red car.
“As I approached, with my cell phone in hand to start recording, I saw the young lady face down on the ground with agents on her,” Moriarty said. “As soon as I walked up, an agent grabbed me by my neck and threw me to the ground and was on top of me.”
Moriarty said she was “part of the people doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing” when immigration officials show up. She was “protesting, alerting the community, videotaping their actions and what they’re doing.”
“I didn’t even get an opportunity to hit record when he grabbed me by the neck and threw me down,” Moriarty said.
After the three individuals, including Moriarty, were apprehended and placed in the back seat of a federal SUV, Moriarty said the agents did not identify themselves by name.
Moriarty described the mechanics of how immigration agents operate in their vehicles as “chaotic.” Agents took Moriarty’s phone and placed it on a center console, but Moriarty was able to retrieve it when they weren’t paying attention, she said. She called a friend and recorded the interaction when she could.
“There does not seem to be a chain of command whatsoever,” Moriarty.
Throughout the ride, the driver pulled his mace out of his pocket, pointed it at Moriarty and threatened to use it three times, to some level of confusion for Biss.
“Now, I’m not a mace expert, but that seems like the wrong… that seems like a strange move,” Biss said.
“My response to him is that we’re all in this together, so… whatever,” Moriarty responded. “The level of incompetence is frightening.”
The agents let their identities slip when they drove around, Moriarty said. At one point, one agent said his phone number out loud during a phone conversation. Moriarty said she memorized it and repeated it out loud minutes later, to that agent’s surprise.
“It’s laughable, but very frightening because they have no idea what they’re doing,” she said.
In Rogers Park, the citizens were able to roll their windows down to notify residents that immigration officials were near.
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“That community organized lickety split and immediately began blowing whistles and yelling,” she said.
Moriarty said the driver attempted to cause another accident with another protester by slamming on his breaks on Chicago’s Clark Street. The two cars did not collide, Moriarty said, but the driver still attempted to mace the driver of the other vehicle.
“He did that on another occasion as well. And finally when he did it a third time, one of the other agents in the car told him not to get out of the car anymore,” Moriarty said.
The agents later met with Evanston police along Skokie’s Sculpture Park to file an accident report for the car crash, according to Moriarty. They drove further up north, then Moriarty was separated from the two other in the back seat after she was transported to a different vehicle. They all drove to FBI offices at 2111 W. Roosevelt Ave. in Chicago.
At the FBI’s offices, Moriarty said she was placed in a room and handcuffed to a bar. “Two allegedly FBI agents” were in the room with her, she said. She asked the FBI agents if she was under arrest, and they responded she was not. “Border Patrol is detaining you,” Moriarty recalls the FBI agents telling her when she asked them if she could leave.
The FBI agents did not respond to Moriarty’s follow up question: “For what?”
Sometime later, Moriarty was walked to the gates of the FBI’s offices and told she was free to go.
“So… they did not enumerate a cause for this… detention, let’s call it generously. They didn’t enumerate your rights. They claimed not to have arrested you and yet they took away your liberty and handcuffed you and without your consent and drove you around town and deposited you 15 miles away from where they took you,” Biss said. “This is not a justice system, this is a lawless reign of terror.”
“They don’t seem to have any sort of control or any sort of boundary,” Moriarty said. “And it appeared just by the way they behaved… that they weren’t afraid of whatever they were doing or that they were going to suffer any consequences.
“History tells you that, you know, the leaders don’t usually go to prison, but everyone else underneath them does. So, I told them they should probably get their affairs in order,” she said.
On Thursday, a federal judge issued a sweeping injunction that puts more permanent restrictions on the use of force by immigration agents during “Operation Midway Blitz.” The judge noted in particular that Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino lied repeatedly in court about force that his agents and he personally inflicted in incidents across the Chicago area.