An eyewitness has described how two federal immigration agents allegedly beat and badly injured a US citizen in a botched arrest attempt in Illinois, and left the man dazed and bleeding on the ground as they walked away after realizing their apparent mistake.
Bystander Ryan Garton told the Associated Press that he saw the agents pinning down the man, who is Black, on the side of the road as he was driving home on Sunday in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. He said he pulled over to record what was happening on video.
“His upper right eye socket and temple were swollen as if he had been punched,” Garton said. The man’s face, he added, was scraped “as if it had been ground into the sidewalk”.
Garton, ۵۶, said one agent had his knee on the man’s back and was “beating up on him”, even as the person shouted: “I’m a citizen, leave me alone.” The witness said about five people were standing nearby, yelling at the agents to stop.
Garton said he urged the officer to get off the man so he could inspect his injuries, and also asserted that the officer acknowledged that he was already aware the man was a US citizen. When the agent stepped away, Garton said he saw bloodstains in the shape of handprints on the man’s shirt.
The man told Garton that he had been walking to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription when the agents stopped him.
Another eyewitness, Michael Lipson, the owner of a store across the street from where the incident occurred, said he saw the federal officers wrestle the man to the ground as the alleged victim repeatedly yelled that he was a citizen. The man’s face looked “badly messed up”, Lipson told the AP.
Lipson said the officers checked cards and papers from the man’s wallet before leaving them scattered on the road. Lipson said he laid out his sweatshirt for the man to rest on while Garton inspected his injuries.
Authorities in Illinois said earlier this week they were looking into the incident, which ended with the victim in hospital with injuries to his head, neck and teeth. It also left one of the agents with a bloodied hand that he told Evanston police he sustained while the suspect resisted an effort to handcuff him.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, said in a statement that ICE officers had “encountered an individual who resembled the target” of an enforcement operation.
“The individual was given lawful commands but was not cooperative and refused to identify himself,” the statement said, adding that the agents “left the scene without further incident” after the man said who he was.
“When ICE officers offered the individual assistance, he refused.”
More detailed accounts of the confrontation, which took place at about ۱۰am on Sunday, have come mostly from the city’s police department and local officials.
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A police statement said the alleged victim told officers that he received head, face and neck injuries during the beating. It said the agents walked away because they claimed a crowd had gathered and they feared protesters would attack them.
Daniel Biss, the Democratic mayor of Evanston, said in a post on X that the man was treated at St Francis hospital for minor injuries, and that the city’s police department “continues to investigate the situation, and we will remain vigilant about federal activities”.
In a separate post on Wednesday, Biss condemned Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has escalated through the president’s second term with enforcement “surges” into Democratic-run cities and states in particular, and resulted in a record ۵۰,۰۰۰ arrests in July alone.
“This violence must end. We need to take Evanston’s energy and fight to Washington to abolish ICE, hold the Trump administration accountable, and end the funding of these brutal invasions into our cities,” Biss wrote.
The incident was one of three separate violent events Sunday involving federal immigration officers. In Austin, Texas, an ICE agent shot and seriously wounded a ۲۸-year-old Venezuelan man in a traffic stop while he worked as a DoorDash delivery driver.
In Michigan, authorities are investigating the death of a ۳۶-year-old Guatemalan national who crashed his car into a tree at high speed after reportedly attempting to flee immigration officers that were trying to detain him.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
