HUMBOLDT PARK — An alderperson who federal agents handcuffed and threatened with arrest is now planning to sue.
The Oct. 3 incident made national headlines, with video of a federal agent roughly grabbing and then handcuffing Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) being shared widely online. It was one of many instances in recent weeks where federal agents have been seen on camera using excessive force against protesters and others questioning their tactics.
Fuentes said she has not been deterred. Now, she’s looking at her legal options and is considering filing a lawsuit against the ICE agent who grabbed her, possibly as soon as this week, she said. The Windy City Times first reported on the potential lawsuit.
“Us documenting the atrocities, the constitutional violations and the violence that we are witnessing is what we need to do in this moment,” Fuentes — who is Puerto Rican and represents a historically Latino region of the city — told Block Club on Tuesday. “Because that is what’s going to keep our city safe.”
Video of the incident shows Fuentes talking to agents inside the emergency room of Humboldt Park Health, asking if they have a signed warrant and telling the agents a man — who they had detained and had at the hospital — has constitutional rights.
Fuentes does not touch the agents, one of whom tells her he will arrest her if she does not leave. Fuentes again asks the agents if they have a warrant, and an agent grabs Fuentes, spins her around and handcuffs her hands.
Fuentes was led outside the hospital and released; there, an agent told her that if she went back inside, she would be arrested, Fuentes said.
The federal agent seen grabbing Fuentes in the video — who was not wearing a uniform or anything that identified him as a federal agent — has also been filmed in at least three other incidents around Chicago and its suburbs, Fuentes said. In one of those instances, the agent is seen roughly pushing a woman into a car.
The man ICE agents tried to arrest had temporary protected status, no criminal record and had been detained by federal immigration agents at a work site, Fuentes said. Federal agents prevented the man from speaking to an attorney or making calls, said the alderperson.
The man is undergoing leg surgery and may need more medical care, Fuentes said.
Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) speaks during an emergency press conference outside Humboldt Park Health on Oct. 3, 2025 denouncing ICE after she was briefly handcuffed by agents inside the hospital for asking if they had a warrant for the man they were detaining. Credit: Ariel Parrella-Aureli/Block Club Chicago
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement: “At the hospital, nearly 30 protesters, including Alderperson Jessie Fuentes, attempted to gain access to the detainee. She was escorted out in handcuffs but never placed under arrest. Once agents removed her from the area, she was free to go.”
McLaughlin characterized the Oct. 3 incident as “brave officers are facing a surge in increase in assaults against them” and claimed U.S. Border Patrol vehicles were blocked by “agitators,” which resulted in federal immigration agents firing tear gas and pepper balls.
“We will not be deterred by rioters and protesters in keeping America safe,” McLaughlin said in the statement.
Before a decision last week temporarily blocking a deployment of the National Guard, U.S. District Judge April Perry expressed doubt over the “credibility and assessment” of federal authorities regarding their characterization of Chicago’s conditions.
Judge Perry citied the dismissal of charges against multiple protesters previously accused of assaulting agents, and a separate ruling in which ICE was found to have violated a consent decree governing warrantless arrests.
At least four of 15 cases have now been dropped involving protesters accused of attacking or impeding federal agents, which have often come out of sworn affidavits from other agents.
The increased immigration enforcement activity is part of operations Midway Blitz and At Large, programs led by ICE and Border Patrol to arrest undocumented people in and around Chicago. The operations kicked off in early September.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested during Operation Midway Blitz, Russell Hott, ICE field director in Chicago, told Block Club earlier this month.
But over the past month, federal agents have shot at least two people, killing one; repeatedly tear-gassed protesters and first responders; shot rubber bullets at protesters; detained U.S. citizens, including children; smoke bombed and tear-gassed more than one Chicago street; fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter and detained a journalist, among other incidents.
“I want to be absolutely clear, the only people at risk in this moment are the residents of the city of Chicago. The only people walking around with military weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets are ICE agents,” Fuentes said. “The only people who have been shooting at people, running people over, killing an individual — Silverio Villegas González — in a suburb outside of Chicago have been ICE agents.”
Chicagoans have sought ways to resist violence from the federal government, like blowing whistles to alert neighbors that federal agents are near, recording federal agents and putting up signs in businesses informing agents they are not welcome on the premises.
And federal courts have dealt the Trump administration a series of defeats: A judge ruled this month that federal agents illegally arrested more than two dozen people without warrants earlier this year in Chicago, violating a consent decree — and opening the door to potentially hundreds of people more recently arrested going free.
A federal judge ruled Oct. 9 that federal immigration agents who aren’t working undercover are required to have visible identification anytime they’re on the job in Chicago and surrounding areas. And court orders last week also directed agents to stop attacking journalists and peaceful protesters.
“What [House Speaker Mike] Johnson and everyone else is saying is to continue to create a fabricated narrative that somehow, in the city of Chicago, people are violent, so it can justify the sort of atrocities and the violence that we are seeing on behalf of federal agents,” Fuentes said. “Us having rapid responders, it’s what is keeping our neighbors safe.”
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