Lakeview, Chicago - Where the Smoke Came with the Terror in Uniform

On a mild autumn afternoon, the smell of tear gas still hangs in the air. Between the Victorian houses of Lakeview, where children usually zip by on scooters and gardeners rake leaves, something has changed. The street feels emptier, the trust more fragile. Here, in the middle of Chicago’s North Side, what many thought impossible has become reality: an operation by federal agents - ICE or something that looked like ICE - in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Without warning. Without notice. It began around noon on Lakewood Avenue, just a few blocks from Wrigley Field. Residents heard the squeal of tires, saw two dark SUVs without markings, saw men in tactical vests - and then the hiss of gas grenades. A gray haze drifted over front yards, over a sandbox, over dogs and pedestrians. “At first I thought it was a fire,” a neighbor said. “Then my throat started burning.”

Our investigation, as well as that of ABC7, later confirmed that tear gas canisters had been used, rolled across the street by ICE agents. It was not a protest, not a threat, not an attack. Just neighbors watching as construction workers were led away from a worksite - apparently because of an immigration procedure. What happened next was a shock for a city that has seen a lot, but not this. “Tear gas was deployed without warning by ICE-like agents while neighbors did nothing to provoke it,” said Bennett Lawson, the alderman of the 44th Ward. He speaks calmly, almost controlled, but his voice betrays anger. “There was no announcement, no order to clear the area. Just gas. On a residential street.”

The agents disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. Left behind were empty shells of gas grenades, teary eyes, coughing children, and a growing sense of alienation. The school two blocks away, a small elementary, went into a soft lockdown. Parents ran to the entrances to pick up their children. “It was surreal,” a teacher said. “As if we were suddenly in a country that feels foreign to us.” The Department of Homeland Security later stated upon inquiry that the operation had been “part of a coordinated measure to identify and secure a person of interest.” But neither ICE, the Pentagon, nor the Chicago Police Department would confirm which unit had actually been present. On the agents’ vests there were no name tags, no insignia. Only the emblem of an agency that has appeared with increasing frequency in American neighborhoods in recent months: DHS Tactical Operations.

The neighbors do not know who was arrested. A construction worker, some say. A landscaper, others say. Some claim he had papers, others that he was “in hiding.” But that has become secondary. What matters is the feeling that a dam has broken here - the line between state and citizen, between control and intimidation.

For weeks, reports have been mounting of aggressive ICE raids in the city - of unmarked vehicles, nighttime arrests, and the use of drones over residential areas. The operation is called “Midway Blitz,” officially to “combat illegal migration.” Unofficially, it feels like an attempt to create a new normal: federal agents with military equipment operating in the middle of American cities. Lakeview is a neighborhood once thought untouchable - safe, affluent, middle-class. The fact that tear gas is being deployed here sends a message: No one is outside the radius anymore.

As the sun sets, traces of gas still linger above the street. The asphalt is damp, a few shell casings lie in the gutters. Children look out from the windows, their parents close the curtains. On social media, someone captioned the video with one sentence: “When the state is afraid of its own neighbors, it has already forgotten whom it is supposed to protect.” And perhaps that is precisely the truth of Lakeview on this day - that a democratic country is being asked to get used to inhaling tear gas without asking questions.