Several people detained in Chicago after immigration check-ins, witnesses say

Several people summoned to an office in the South Loop neighborhood for what they thought were routine immigration check-ins were instead taken into custody Wednesday by what appeared to be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to witnesses and an immigration advocate, in a scene that drew about 50 protesters and was described as “very chaotic.”

About a dozen people were detained Wednesday, according to Antonio Gutierrez, co-founder of Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD). Gutierrez and two friends of the detained individuals told The Washington Post that they believed those taken into custody are all enrolled in ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), an alternative to detention that allows people to be released into their communities while their immigration court hearings proceed.

Waquas Mehmood, 38, of suburban Skokie, Illinois, and Carlos Pineda, 27, of Gurnee, Illinois, who regularly accompany their friends to these appointments, said the individuals received text messages Monday telling them to come to a government subcontractor’s office on Tuesday or Wednesday for a check-in.

Such appointments tend to last about 75 minutes. On Wednesday, people went to their appointments and soon stopped answering their phones, according to Gutierrez, Mehmood and Pineda. The three said the people they had accompanied did not reappear until they were marched into a van outside the premises of BI Incorporated, a government contractor that administers the ISAP program.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

News of the detainments quickly spread through Chicago’s immigrant advocacy community, drawing about 50 protesters to the scene, including several members of the Chicago City Council.

As people clamored to document and protest the detainments, Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez of the city’s 25th Ward said immigration officials at one point aggressively pushed his colleague, Alderman Anthony Quezada of the 35th Ward, to the ground. Chicago police were on the scene for crowd control but did not make any arrests.

“I think these people were tricked into coming here,” said Sigcho-Lopez, who was among the city officials who protested the detentions. “They trick people to come here, and are detained by masked agents — they don’t even look like ICE.”

In recent weeks, masked officers have descended on courthouses, too, arresting stunned immigrants showing up for scheduled immigration hearings. Federal officials have aimed to dramatically accelerate deportations as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States.

Thousands of people have been detained this year amid the crackdown, which has sometimes bypassed the courts and targeted migrants with no known criminal records.

Mehmood drove his friend Muhammad Imran, 62, into the city for a check-in visit and was left shaken by what he saw Wednesday.

He said Imran was inside the building for about 75 minutes — approximately the typical length of a check-in — before he emerged, telling Mehmood that immigration officials had let him briefly step outside for food because he is diabetic.

“He just came to the car, drank water, ate a Kit Kat,” Mehmood said. “And while he was sitting there, ICE agents came out, took him from the car and dragged him back inside. He had permission to be out there. He had the ankle monitor; he wasn’t trying to go away.”

According to video Mehmood shared with The Post, Imran shouted as agents led him back inside: “I’m here 30 years! I’m a grandfather! Not even one felony!”

Protesters can be heard chanting “Shame!” and “Let him go!”

Mehmood said he and Imran both came from Pakistan, and he knows his friend as a loving family man who likes to barbecue and dote on his 2-year-old granddaughter. Imran’s wife and children are distraught, Mehmood said, adding that as of Wednesday evening, it was not clear where Imran had been taken.

He described the scene as “very chaotic,” with other families and friends of immigrants waiting and watching in confusion as their loved ones were detained. One boy cried as his mother was led away, while relatives and community members clung to one another or shouted at immigration officials.

“What I witnessed today was not American at all,” he said.

Mehmood was among the bystanders encountered by Gutierrez, 36, and other immigration advocates who arrived at the facility in support of Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda, a Honduran woman who is a longtime OCAD member.

Gutierrez suspected something was wrong late Wednesday morning when immigration lawyers for Yolanda said they were denied access to her appointment. After more than an hour of waiting, Gutierrez said the lawyers texted with an update: Yolanda was being detained and handcuffed.

“What we make of today is what we’ve understood the last 130 days of the Trump administration: There’s no longer law and order,” Gutierrez said. They said immigrants such as Yolanda had been compliant with immigration courts and ISAP and that luring them to a regular check-in only to detain them makes it impossible to comply with their immigration supervision in good faith.

“It is cruel,” Gutierrez said. “There’s no other way to describe this.”

The scene was similarly distressing to Pineda, of Gurnee, who had arrived that morning with Jose Aleman, 32, a longtime family friend. Pineda takes Aleman to his check-ins in the city before the two head to work at the HVAC business that Pineda took over from his father.

On Wednesday, after Aleman went inside, Pineda waited an hour, then two, then three, with no word from his friend.

“His wife was worried, so she kept calling me,” Pineda said. “So I tried to check in, but they wouldn’t give me any information. They just said, ‘Call the immigration office’ — but that goes nowhere.”

After waiting several hours, Pineda walked down the block in search of a public restroom. When he returned, he learned Aleman had been taken away.

By dinnertime, Pineda’s lunch was still sitting in his car as he lingered outside the building hoping for any word or shred of information from advocates or other witnesses, trying to piece together where Aleman might have been taken.

Aleman was normally the calm one, trying to help Pineda not get stressed about his business or his responsibilities, Pineda said. He had not previously taken a strong stance on immigration, wanting to “stay out of the way” of confrontations on a contentious issue. But in his own peaceful way, Pineda said, he was committed to standing up for Aleman.

“There are some things you really got to fight for,” he said.

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Joshua Lott contributed to this report.