Fuentes said she has not been deterred. Now, she\u2019s 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<\/a> on the potential lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUs documenting the atrocities, the constitutional violations and the violence that we are witnessing is what we need to do in this moment,\u201d Fuentes \u2014\u00a0who is Puerto Rican and represents a historically Latino region of the city \u2014 told Block Club on Tuesday. \u201cBecause that is what\u2019s going to keep our city safe.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 who they had detained and had at the hospital \u2014 has constitutional rights.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The federal agent seen grabbing Fuentes in the video \u2014 who was not wearing a uniform or anything that identified him as a federal agent \u2014 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The man is undergoing leg surgery and may need more medical care, Fuentes said.<\/p>\n Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement: \u201cAt 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.\u201d <\/p>\n McLaughlin characterized the Oct. 3 incident as \u201cbrave officers are facing a surge in increase in assaults against them\u201d and claimed U.S. Border Patrol vehicles were blocked by \u201cagitators,\u201d which resulted in federal immigration agents firing tear gas and pepper balls.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not be deterred by rioters and protesters in keeping America safe,\u201d McLaughlin said in the statement.<\/p>\n Before a decision last week temporarily blocking a deployment of the National Guard, U.S. District Judge April Perry expressed doubt over the \u201ccredibility and assessment<\/a>\u201d of federal authorities regarding their characterization of Chicago\u2019s conditions.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n At least\u00a0four of 15 cases<\/a>\u00a0have now been dropped involving protesters accused of attacking or impeding federal agents, which have often come out of sworn affidavits from other agents.<\/p>\n The increased immigration enforcement activity is part of operations Midway Blitz<\/a> and At Large<\/a>, programs led by ICE and Border Patrol to arrest undocumented people in and around Chicago. The operations kicked off in early September.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n But over the past month, federal agents have\u00a0shot at least two people<\/a>,\u00a0killing one<\/a>; repeatedly\u00a0tear-gassed protesters<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0first responders<\/a>;\u00a0shot rubber bullets<\/a>\u00a0at protesters;\u00a0detained U.S. citizens<\/a>,\u00a0including children<\/a>;\u00a0smoke bombed and tear-gassed more than one Chicago street<\/a>;\u00a0fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0detained a journalist<\/a>, among other incidents.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d Fuentes said. \u201cThe only people who have been shooting at people, running people over, killing an individual \u2014 Silverio Villegas Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a> \u2014 in a suburb outside of Chicago have been ICE agents.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And federal courts have dealt the Trump administration a series of defeats: A judge ruled this month that federal agents illegally arrested<\/a> more than two dozen people without warrants earlier this year in Chicago, violating a consent decree \u2014 and opening the door to potentially hundreds of people more recently arrested going free<\/a>.<\/p>\n A federal judge ruled Oct. 9 that federal immigration agents who aren\u2019t working undercover are required to have visible identification anytime they\u2019re on the job in Chicago and surrounding areas<\/a>. And court orders last week also directed agents to\u00a0stop attacking journalists and peaceful protesters<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat [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,\u201d Fuentes said. \u201cUs having rapid responders, it\u2019s what is keeping our neighbors safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUMBOLDT PARK \u2014 An alderperson who federal agents handcuffed and threatened with arrest is now planning to sue.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":305944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,142442,121074],"class_list":{"0":"post-305943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-jessie-fuentes","12":"tag-operation-midway-blitz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115379448487551663","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/jessie-presser-HP-1024x683.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n