October 7, 2025
A note from reporter Maira Khwaja:
A week ago, I woke up to news about an ICE raid of a building in South Shore, the neighborhood immediately south of our office. Just a few days earlier, a friend asked me if we should expect to see ICE in our part of the South Side. The de facto segregation of Chicago can feel so entrenched at times that it can be easy to assume, sometimes, that violence in one part of the city won’t be felt in others.
This ICE raid on a 130-unit building in South Shore was the first of its kind in Chicago. Nearly 300 federal agents raided the building in the middle of the night, evacuating the residents, and zip-tieing dozens of people -- including citizens, and barely-clothed children and babies -- for hours on the sidewalk and in vans. The Department of Homeland Security says it arrested 37 people, including four children. One source who works at the elementary school across the street from the building shared, in our latest story with the South Side Weekly, that at least two of their students lived there, and that the school has not been able to locate them since.
A predominantly Black neighborhood, South Shore is often cited as a neighborhood with the highest rate of eviction filings in Chicago. The state provided limited rental assistance in 2024 to many newly arriving immigrants from Venezuela and elsewhere, to be housed in buildings like this property at 7500 S South Shore Dr., as the city closed its migrant shelters. This building is mired in controversy, as Wells Fargo Bank brought a $27 million lawsuit last year against the owner, who appears to have abandoned it.
When I walked through the building a few hours after the raid, to find it empty with fresh boot prints still on the kicked down apartment doors, I was reminded of details of police abuse in high rise public housing in its final era of demolition. The elevators were broken; water seemingly leaked everywhere; the smell of mold became nauseating. I know of the similarities only through documentation in the first edition of View from the Ground by Jamie Kalven and Patricia Evans, in which residents of public housing often reported inhumane housing conditions, abandoned by City management, along with warrantless raids, destruction of property, unlawful detainment and arrest. Police abuse with impunity in our city has long been connected to deep poverty and neglected housing.
The past few weeks have felt nothing short of a federal occupation in Chicago, putting the entire city on high alert about a roaming extralegal force that sees itself above due process and our first amendment rights. On Saturday, September 27, Steve Held, a reporter at Unraveled Press, was arrested while covering protests outside of Broadview Detention Center, after a week of federal agents shooting pepper balls and rubber bullets at press and protestors there. On Wednesday, agents were filmed choking a Black man on the west side of Chicago and conducting a raid outside a homeless shelter in Bronzeville to arrest four people. On Friday, immigrant advocacy groups alerted communities about the launch of a possible ICE operation called “Freaky Friday” that is targeting minors who arrived in the U.S. alone without their parents. Also on Friday, agents in Logan Square threw tear gas a block from an elementary school as bystanders protested them in traffic, and handcuffed Ald. Jessie Fuentes in Humboldt Park Hospital. On Saturday, a federal agent shot a civilian in traffic multiple times in Brighton Park, and another body slammed and cracked the skull of a bystander observing ICE.
Chicagoans are finding creative ways to rapidly respond and stand up for their neighbors: through honking, filming, volunteering to deliver groceries, supporting street vendors, attending ICE watch training, and yelling alerts when federal agents are present. The Saturday evening Held was arrested, ten newsrooms including the Invisible Institute worked together rapidly to issue a joint statement calling for his release (he was released early Sunday morning). On Monday, October 6, a group of protestors and journalists filed a First Amendment suit against the Trump administration. And, the City of Chicago and State of Illinois sued the Trump administration and the United States Army for deploying the Texas national guard to Chicago.
The Invisible Institute continues to work with other local newsrooms to report on use of force by federal agents.
As we go deeper into this harrowing era, the way forward is clear: meet your neighbors, document what you observe, and practice your freedom of speech. Expanding our understanding of who our neighbors are, and insisting upon upholding each others’ rights, will be the way we hold on to ourselves.