Dan returns to his apartment unit — which was ransacked and had items left behind that were not his — at 7500 S. South Shore Drive in South Shore on Oct. 1, 2025. The apartment building was raided by federal agents the morning before.| Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
CHICAGO—South Shore Chicago residents who witnessed a massive ICE raid on an apartment building on South Shore Drive and 75th Street here last week continue to express a variety of emotions, including outrage, anger, and fear, over what one immigrant worker said Saturday that he never expected to see happen in America.
Under the cover of darkness at about 1 a.m., Sept. 28, Blackhawk helicopters descended over the roof of the apartment complex and dropped agents dressed in military uniforms onto the roof. They proceeded to burst into apartments on all the floors, banging in doors and tossing belongings, including clothing, bedding, and papers out into the hallway,s which were strewn from end to end as terrorized people were marched out and into the streets
Children were dragged naked from their beds and separated from their parents, many of them who were either citizens or fully documented. ICE offered no evidence of any illegal activity carried out by those grabbed, arrested, and separated from their children.
Children crying out for their mothers were zip-tied and left on sidewalks as the building was emptied out by the masked men in military uniforms who manhandled their victims before they, like the adults, were loaded into vans.
At least 37 people were kidnapped from their apartments, bringing the total thus far arrested in Operation Midway Blitz, as it is called by ICE, to 300.
A resident who lives in a building on the other side of South Shore Drive told People’s World that she watched helplessly as children were dragged out into the street, some individually and others, “herded in groups.”
Agents were gathered alongside both sides of the street outside the building, neighbors reported. One neighbor told People’s World that ICE vehicles were seen parked along the street in the afternoon before the raid.
Some residents of the neighborhood attended a meeting at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church on Saturday, where one documented immigrant worker who lives near the raided apartment building said, “I never expected that this kind of thing would happen in this country, I thought I had left all of that behind when I came to America.”
A priest active in the struggle for immigrant rights told People’s World that it is time for everyone to join the fight for justice for immigrants. Rev. Sandra Castillo, a leader in that fight who spoke by Zoom to people at St. Margaret’s on Oct. 4, said, “This is a fight for everyone to take up. An attack on any one group of people like this is an attack on all of us, and we cannot let this go without a response.”
Another woman who lives near the raided building told People’s World that she could not stop crying as she watched children “dragged out and separated from their mothers.”
She said that she asked an agent why he was doing this to the people in the building. “Don’t feel sorry for them,” she said he told her in what she said was a contemptuous tone of voice. “Some of these people don’t even pay their rent.”
The raid was part of what the Trump administration is calling Operation Midway Blitz and is part of its attempt to intimidate lawmakers and leaders of states and municipalities that voted for Kamala Harris in the last election.
Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson has condemned the raid and vowed to continue the fight against the Trump administration’s targeting of his city.
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