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A producer and editor for WGN-TV were aggressively detained and frisked by Border Patrol agents Friday morning Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations In the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago.
Debbie Brockman, who has worked for a local television station since 2011, was violently pinned to the ground by two federal agents and her hands tied behind her back. As she lay face down on the road as masked agents handcuffed her, a local resident who was filming the encounter asked her name.
“Debbie Brockman, I work for WGN. Please tell them,” a frantic Brockman told Josh Thomas, who works at a Chicago law firm and lives near the intersection where the arrest occurred. According to Thomas, another unidentified man was also detained by agents.
Homeland Security officials said Brockman was charged with assault on a federal law enforcement officer. IndependentBut no charges were filed against him and he was released from Customs and Border Protection custody Friday afternoon, WGN said in a statement.
With onlookers yelling at the agents and calling them “fascists”, officers eventually pulled the handcuffed Brockman – whose pants had fallen down during the difficult encounter – and threw him into an unmarked silver van with New Jersey plates. As soon as the officer sat in the car, According to Thomas’s video And other people at the sceneResidents shouted “Nazi bullshit” at the agents as the vehicle spun and collided with another SUV.
“Get out of our neighborhood. Get out of our city,” a pedestrian is heard yelling at the agents, while other onlookers honked their car horns and threw epithets at the officers.
The TV station addressed the incident in a statement.
The station said, “Earlier today, a WGN-TV Creative Services employee was detained by ICE. He has been released, and no charges have been filed against him.” “Out of respect for their privacy, we will not be making any further statements regarding this incident.”
in a statement to Independent, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Border Patrol agents “were conducting an immigration enforcement operation when several violent agitators used their vehicles to block the agents in an attempt to obstruct and assault a federal officer.”
“Out of fear for public safety and law enforcement, officers used their service vehicle to ambush and ram a suspect’s vehicle,” he said. “While agents were driving, Deborah Brockman, a U.S. citizen, threw objects at the Border Patrol car and was arrested for assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
McLaughlin said: “This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals running cars into our law enforcement officers. These attacks highlight the dangers our law enforcement officers face every day – while going unpaid because of the Democrats’ government shutdown.”
At the time of publication, Brockman’s name had not yet appeared on a federal criminal arrest document in Chicago.
talking to Chicago TribuneThomas said that by the time he came out of his apartment, the agents already had an unidentified Latino male in the vehicle and Brockman was pinned down in the middle of the street.
“I walk out the front door of the condo, she’s laying on the ground on the street and they’re wrestling with her, trying to get her hands behind her back,” he said. “They said they were detaining him for obstruction. He said, ‘I didn’t obstruct.'”
The Trump administration has deployed federal officers to Chicago and other Democratic-led cities Support the President’s mass deportation agendaWhich has faced increasing protests outside ICE facilities. Trump has Hundreds of National Guard troops were unionized.Including troops from Texas to support federal authorities in Chicago and elsewhere, but a federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the administration from sending troops to America’s largest city.
A trial The administration of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accused the president of trying to escalate tensions by sending troops to the state in an attempt to justify the widespread presence of military forces on US soil.
Protesters, members of the press and local faith leaders have Sued the administration also According to the lawsuit, what he called a “pattern of excessive brutality” by federal agents who were dressed in combat gear and armed with so-called less-lethal crowd control weapons seriously injured civilians. Another federal judge ordered federal officials to stop using those weapons without warning, among other constraints.