Politics
Key City Panel Demands Probe Into CPD’s Conduct During Immigration Raid, Protest
Protesters clash with law enforcement in the South Loop on June 4, 2025. (Provided)
A key City Council panel unanimously demanded Tuesday that an independent probe examine the conduct of Chicago Police Department brass and officers during a June 4 federal raid on a South Loop immigration office that triggered a protest.
After a nearly five-hour hearing, the City Council’s Immigration and Refugee Rights Committee advanced an order calling on the Chicago Police Department, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications and mayor’s office to provide all communications and data about the police presence inside and outside a building at 22nd Street and Michigan Avenue used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to conduct immigration enforcement actions.
The full City Council is scheduled to take a final vote on that order July 16 amid questions about whether CPD officials violated the city’s Welcoming City ordinance, which prohibits all city employees from assisting federal immigration agents in nearly all cases.
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th Ward), the chair of the immigrant rights committee, said calls for a probe should not be interpreted as an “attack” on CPD brass, who he said “tried to make the right call” at an “unprecedented moment.”
Instead, officials are attempting to call “balls and strikes” and prepare for the next attempt by the Trump administration to expand deportation operations in Chicago, Vasquez said.
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But most of the hearing was consumed by an effort by committee members to determine which city agency should probe the way CPD handled the incident — and questions about why a formal investigation had not yet been launched.
Beatriz Ponce de León, the deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said the mayor’s office had launched an internal review of the events of June 4 and reminded CPD officers and other city employees about how to comply with city laws designed to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation.
LaKenya White, the interim chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the city agency charged with investigating police misconduct, said investigating the incident was outside COPA’s authority. White said her agency referred the complaint to the Office of the Inspector General.
CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs has also not launched a probe, officials said.
The Welcoming City Ordinance requires the Office of the Inspector General to probe suspected violations of the law by non-police city employees, while COPA is responsible for determining whether individual officers violated the ordinance.
None of the complaints about the June 4 incident received by COPA named a specific officer, officials said. COPA does not have the authority to assess whether CPD has broadly violated a city ordinance and is also prohibited from investigating Supt. Larry Snelling under the terms of the federal court order known as the consent decree that requires CPD to change the way it trains, supervises and disciplines officers.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said she would conduct a probe of the incident if no other city agency launches an investigation, but said that would be less than ideal, since her office is prevented from speaking publicly about her office’s work in most cases.
Officials and Chicagoans “ought to have a very low tolerance of buck passing,” Witzburg said.
Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) said she was deeply frustrated by officials’ responses during the marathon hearing.
“We should be ashamed of ourselves,” Fuentes said. “Our communities and our families deserve better.”
At least 10 Chicagoans were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during what was supposed to be a routine check-in on June 4. News of those arrests, which came as President Donald Trump ramped up efforts to launch the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, spread quickly and brought dozens of protestors to the building as well as Ald. Anthony Quezada (35th Ward), Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward) and Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward.)
Quezada told WTTW News a federal agent threw him to the ground during the protest.
“I fell into a puddle and got wet. As they continued to make their way into the building, there were multiple altercations in which they were using their batons to push community members,” Quezada said. “They punched me in the gut area.”
Chicago Police officers arrived at the building after getting 911 calls from an ICE employee, the Department of Homeland Security and an alert from a CPD internal monitoring unit, officials said.
Glen Brooks, the director of community policing for CPD, said officers did not know a mass arrest of immigrants was underway when they arrived. Officers left the building once that became clear, Brooks said.
“We then moved outside of the facility and provided public safety traffic control” as the protests grew, Brooks said.
That conduct is specifically permitted by department policy, Brooks said.
But some alderpeople said Tuesday that they witnessed CPD actively helping ICE agents conduct the mass arrests by clearing the way for agents to make arrests by blocking streets, protecting ICE vehicles, and “escorting” ICE agents to their destinations, making it easier for them to “abduct” people.
“There is no reason, no reason, why any department, or this city, cannot properly investigate an incident,” Fuentes said. “Because we are a welcoming city. We have — for years — been telling immigrant families they are safe in the city of Chicago because we uphold the welcoming city ordinance. And yet we are sitting in this committee hearing debating whose jurisdiction it is to investigate this.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
