Federal agents arrested a Chicago day care worker just after the center opened Wednesday in a scene city officials said unfolded in front of teachers, parents and children.
City officials and parents told NBC Chicago the federal agents took a teacher from Rayito de Sol, a Spanish immersion day care and preschool on Addison Street near Western Avenue, out of the building soon after it opened at 7 a.m.
“A member of our community was violently taken out of this day care with children onsite, with fellow educators onsite,” said Alderman Matt Martin. “I’ve seen video, both video that was taken by parents who were waiting in line to drop their kids off, as well as video footage from inside the building. It’s some of the most chilling video footage I have seen certainly in my time in office.”
Martin said the educator was “followed inside by ICE” uninvited and “violently taken away.”
“We had agents with guns who were walking around the facility with teachers inside, with children inside,” he said. “We are, of course, demanding she be released immediately.”
Numerous videos were posted to social media showing the incident shortly after it happened. In at least one video the woman can be heard telling authorities in Spanish she had papers.
Video from a parent taken moments after the arrest and obtained by NBC Chicago showed officers wearing gear identifying them as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents speaking to someone in a vehicle as onlookers appear to cry nearby, one holding a child.
“All I heard was crying, and it was just like a very guttural human just cry,” Adam Gonzalez, who captured the footage, said.
Gonzalez’s 1-year-old son attends the day care and was in the teacher's class.
“It’s really heart wrenching to know that someone who has poured herself into my child is no longer here,” he said.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to NBC Chicago’s request for comment, but Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said the situation stemmed from an attempted traffic stop.
She said federal agents attempted to stop a vehicle driven by a man with the woman inside but the driver “refused to pull the vehicle over.”
“Law enforcement pursued the vehicle before the assailant sped into a shopping plaza where he and the female passenger fled the vehicle. They ran into a daycare and attempted to barricade themselves inside the daycare — recklessly endangering the children inside,” McLaughlin wrote on social media.
McLaughlin said the woman was arrested “inside a vestibule.”
Details on the man she said was involved in the situation were not immediately available.
“What happened today is not going to be forgotten at the end of today, or tomorrow, or at the end of this week. I saw dozens of parents and educators weeping, hugging each other, consoling one another, children who were crying as well,” Martin said. “You have an educator who was going inside to teach our children and you have federal agents with guns going inside to violently take her away.”
Parents described being “horrified” by the situation, some calling it a “nightmare.”
“We need to make sure this stops,” said parent Tara Goodarzi, an attorney whose 3-year-old child attends the school. "Schools are supposed to be places of safety, of security, not places where we have to talk to our children about why their teacher is being abducted and screaming and running away from agents with guns and masks while she’s trying to enter the school."
The day care said it would be closed for the remainder of the day.
