On October 22, 2025, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raided across a series of buildings at 31st and Cicero in Little Village. The operation then wound through other local streets and parts of the Little Village and Cicero neighborhoods. Seven people were detained, two of whom were US citizens. The raid was overseen directly by Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief, who was on the ground during the operation.
The raid targeted several local places, including street vendors, a laundromat, a Sam’s Club, a tortillería, and a Home Depot. Little Village is sometimes referred to as the “Mexico of the Midwest” due to its large Latino population, particularly with a large number of Mexican immigrants.
Local Alderman Michael Rodriguez (22nd) was one of the people on the scene during the raid. The two citizens who were detained, Rodriguez’s chief of staff Elianne Bahena and police district council member Jacqueline Lopez, were also both local officials. At least one of the non-citizens detained has not been identified, but according to his boss, Carlos Macías, the owner of Carnicería y Taquería Aguascalientes where the unnamed employee worked, was undergoing the asylum process and had been living peacefully in the neighborhood for several years.
Several aspects of the raid are still under heavy scrutiny. At one point, one of the immigration officers leading the raid called the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to report a member of the crowd driving their car into a Border Patrol vehicle. (It is unclear if this person was Bovino, though some reporting has referred to the caller as a Border Patrol “chief”, implying it may have been.) However, when CPD arrived on the scene, the accident appeared to be between two civilian vehicles. There was no evidence of any Border Patrol vehicle having been involved. No injuries have been reported from this crash. Senator Celina Villanueva to call for people to distrust any official reports from DHS and ICE, saying of the incident “The reality is they lie.”
Additionally, several videos of bystanders appear to show ICE agents pointing guns at civilians, and at least one man was pepper sprayed. The Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol (DHS) has not responded for comment, though has broadly denied accusations of excessive force in other contexts. Bahena was among those recording the events, and was detained while attempting to document cases of ICE violence against local residents, leading groups such as the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to question the reasons for her detention, especially given the fact that ICE has refused to provide any.
While this incident was new, outlets (such as Corli Jay for TRiiBE, “Feds spotted in Dan Ryan Woods, South Side neighborhoods and Chicago suburbs as head of LA ICE raids arrives”) have covered increased ICE activity in this area since mid-September, following Bovino’s announcement that ICE agents have arrived in Chicago, set to the song “End of Beginning”. Jay has been part of a group of independent journalists using social media footage to document and identify ICE agents and operations across the country. This raid may have been larger, but smaller operations in this neighborhood have been happening consistently since ICE’s arrival.