Rafael Verasa and Evelyn Herrera were heading to Sam's Club in Cicero on Saturday with their 1-year-old daughter to buy diapers, eggs, milk and other groceries when they heard car horns and helicopters. Just outside the city limits, federal agents arrived in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.
As they pulled into the parking lot at the intersection of Ogden Avenue and 26th Street, the Berwins saw a convoy of federal vehicles heading toward them. Herrera took out her phone to record a video, following her mother's advice. They decided to turn around.
A few seconds later, a black car drove past them, heading in the opposite direction from them. Herrera's video shows a man wearing a mask and helmet pointing pepper spray at an open window and shooting at the car. A wave of yellow-orange cloudy substance hit 25-year-old Veraza in the face. Herrera, 24, turned around in the backseat and saw their little girl, Arinna Sofia, with her eyes closed.
Black cars continued to pass by when Veraza stopped. Passers-by rushed to wash the faces of family members.
“My first thought was my daughter,” Veraza said. “I didn’t even care if it got to me.”
On Sunday, Arinna climbed into a rolling chair at the nonprofit New Life Center in Little Village and munched on a banana as her parents talked about their first interaction with Operation Midway Blitz.
The pepper spraying was part of the latest federal incursion into Little Village, where agents, including Cmdr. Gregory Bovino repeatedly deployed chemical crowd control along 26th Street and battled angry residents as part of the Trump administration's blitz targeting undocumented immigrants.
Neighbors, activists and politicians flooded the area, demanding that agents leave town, film their actions and follow the convoy as it moved through Little Village, Lawndale and Tri-Taylor, where agents regrouped at FBI headquarters. The chaos followed a report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that someone had fired at an agents' car near 26th Street and Kedzie Avenue. Chicago police responded to the intersection but said there were no reports of a person being injured.
Department of Homeland Security officials did not comment on the confrontation with Veraz's family in a statement, saying only that people were “chasing” a federal convoy into the Sam's Club parking lot and that one Border Patrol vehicle was rammed during the confrontation. Federal agents arrested nine people during the morning, eight of whom were citizens, according to the statement.
On Saturday afternoon at a nearby hospital, doctors called Arinna to poison control and washed Veraza's face and ears with saline. According to him, his whole face was numb.
They knew about federal operations in and around Chicago, but during the two months they were in the city, they did not meet a single agent. They did not participate in the protests against the Blitz. The closest they got, they said, was that Veraza had colleagues at his job as a sales representative who were afraid to come to work, and his brother was present at one of the massive “No Kings” protests downtown.
Arinna wore tiny braids on top of her head and peered out from behind the conference table, occasionally extending her hand to offer someone a pencil. On Saturday, she watched silently from her mother's lap as a woman washed her father's hair on the grassy knoll outside Sam's Club.
Since the pepper spraying, Arinna has become more clingy and no longer wants to be alone, Veraza said. Herrera doesn't want to return to Sam's Club. Herrera said that when she is old enough to understand, they will tell her what happened to their family in the simplest way possible.
Southwest Side politicians and civic leaders at a Sunday news conference denounced Saturday's sweep of Little Village by federal authorities as “state-sponsored terrorism,” especially the fact that young children like Arinna were part of the collateral damage from the raids.
“Each time they left destruction in their wake,” said state Sen. Celina Villanueva, a Chicago Democrat. “We deserve to not have 1-year-old children pepper-sprayed while they're trying to go shopping. What the president of this country is doing is terrorism. We need to call it like it is.”
A federal judge was so alarmed by agents' use of tear gas, pepper balls and other less-lethal munitions at places like a well-known local discount mall that she issued an extensive order a ban on the use of these munitions except in situations where agents are under active threat. Even so, the order requires agents to give two warnings before they use tear gas or other irritants against civilians.
Politicians and leaders at a news conference said they had not heard any warnings about crowd controls being introduced. Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22, described watching the arrest in front of a bank at 26th Street and Pulaski Road and a flashbang grenade going off a few feet away from the 6-year-old boy.
“People protested loudly,” he said. “They were furious. They were furious. Next thing we know, we're all ducking for cover.”
Veraza, for his part, didn't understand why agents were spraying cars at Sam's Club or why they weren't paying more attention to keeping kids out of the way when they confronted neighbors and made arrests.
“(Neighbors) may be protesting, but they're not doing anything,” he said. “What exactly is the reason? Because they were kicked out of the Little Village?”
