A family outing turned terrifying on Saturday when Rafael Veraza and his family were allegedly attacked by a masked ICE agent in a Chicago Sam’s Club parking lot.
According to The Associated Press, Veraza was in the car with his family when they heard a helicopter overhead and cars honking. As they decided to leave, a masked agent allegedly approached their vehicle—and pepper-sprayed through an open window.
“I had waters, water down my face and basically water down her face because I didn’t know the effects of the pepper spray towards her,” Veraza said at a press conference on Sunday, CBS News reported.
The victim was his 1-year-old daughter, who suffers from asthma. Veraza told reporters that she “was struggling to breathe,” the AP wrote. The spray aggravated Veraza’s own asthma, forcing him to go to the hospital.
“When I got to the hospital, my heartbeats was at 263 per minute,” Veraza said, per CBS News. Doctors called poison control for his daughter, while Veraza’s face had gone completely numb, The Chicago Tribune reported.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied the incident occurred.
“There was no crowd control or pepper spray deployed in a Sam’s Club parking lot,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP on Monday.
Veraza and his daughter were near a spot where ICE agents and local residents have previously clashed. DHS told the AP that its agents had faced a “hostile crowd” throwing paint cans and bricks at vehicles. No one was hurt in those incidents, but McLaughlin said DHS agents will “continue despite the violence.”
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents, part of Operation Midway Blitz, are expected to leave Chicago after being deployed in late September. ICE agents, however, are expected to remain, according to McLaughlin’s post on the social platform X.
The alleged pepper-spraying has sparked outrage online and locally, raising urgent questions about ICE’s tactics and the safety of families caught in their operations.
