A Berwyn family was driving with their 1-year-old child Saturday when they were pepper-sprayed by federal agents, a video taken by the family shows.
At a news conference Sunday in Ald. Michael Rodriguez’s 12th Ward office, Rafael Veraza said his family was on its way to buy groceries at a Cicero Sam’s Club when they heard whistles and sirens.
Veraza attempted to leave the Sam’s Club parking lot when a federal agent drove alongside the line of cars exiting, spraying chemical irritants through open windows and striking occupants — including Veraza’s 1-year-old daughter, Ariana.
“I didn’t have to go through this, and my daughter didn’t have to go through this,” Veraza said. “We aren’t protesters, we weren’t going after them, we weren’t attacking them.”
Veraza said his family is considering legal action to help pay for specialist care that he said his daughter now requires.
The video, filmed by Veraza’s wife in the passenger seat, shows a masked federal agent driving a black pickup truck and firing pepper spray into the open driver’s window of a vehicle. The video later shows his daughter, whose face is censored, crying as someone says, “You’re OK, Mama, you’re OK” and people wash out their eyes.
The Department of Homeland Security would not comment on the specific incident, instead sending a similar statement to one it sent the day before in response to inquiries about its campaign in Little Village Saturday — where shots were allegedly fired at agents, according to DHS, and multiple people were arrested after residents responded to agents detaining people.
DHS would not answer questions about whether the action violated U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use-of-force policy — which states that agents “should not use [pepper spray], and consider other force options” on small children, visibly pregnant people and “operators of motor vehicles” — or a Thursday preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis restricting the use of “riot control weapons” against protesters or observers who pose no immediate threat, and without two warnings, among other restrictions.
Ellis said the U.S. Justice Department’s arguments against a lawsuit over the treatment of protesters and journalists “lack credibility,” in part due to U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, who Ellis said “admitted that he lied” about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village last month.
“The point is intimidation,” said Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia at the news conference. “The point is to drive home that we should give in, that we should not demand our rights, that we are lesser. ... We are at the forefront of a new fight for civility and civil rights in America.”
The incident came amid a weekend Border Patrol campaign in Little Village, Cicero and Oak Park, where a Girl Scouts food drive was halted Saturday after the troop encountered federal agents.
“What I witnessed with my eyes yesterday was state-sponsored terrorism,” said state Sen. Celina Villanueva of the activity in Little Village Saturday. “They kept going and coming back, and every single time they left destruction and traumatized people in their wake.”
Violet Miller
Chicago Sun-TimesNews reporter
