Sarah Zematis hands whistles to neighbors Alan Teller (left) and Larry Bauer to use to warn people of ICE in the neighborhood. She bought all five they had at Lemoi Ace Hardware Tuesday afternoon. “I said, ‘Please get more in stock. We need more.’” Credit: Richard Cahan Late morning on Tuesday, six neighbors who live just west of the intersection of Monroe Street and Sherman Avenue saw something alarming. “I didn’t hear a lot at the beginning because I was cooking and listening to podcasts,” said Iuliana Pascu, “but I noticed our dog was barking. She always barks at the landscapers, but she was more agitated than usual. So I came towards the door, and then I saw ICE agents outside in camouflage. Very scary.” Across the street, Larry Bauer was writing on his laptop near the front of his house. Alan Teller was talking to his high school friend on the phone. Tim Doran was doing information technology work in his third-floor attic. Cassidhe Hart was resting. She had gotten her COVID booster on Monday and was laying on the couch looking at a crossword puzzle. And neighbor Sarah Zematis had just returned home. “As I got out of my car, I heard the honking and I thought, ‘No way.’” They all heard car horns and commotion. And heard whistles. They knew immediately that ICE had invaded their neighborhood. A screenshot from a publicly available video showing a man being taken into custody by ICE agents on Monroe Street just west of Sherman Avenue on Tuesday One person, a landscaper named Carlos who works for Nature’s Perspective Landscaping, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after a determined struggle on the sidewalk. The horns and shouts were from other neighbors or members of a rapid response team, activists who monitor ICE activities. Zematis was one of the first to come upon the arrest. “They had just surrounded the landscaper, and they ripped his leaf blower off his back,” she said. “And I started calling, and they threw him to the ground. And that’s when people started coming out.” Many used their phones to record what was happening. Tim Doran rushed downstairs. He didn’t bother to put on his shoes. He had taken a class on resistance from Protect Rogers Park and knew he had to scan the scene first. When he saw five or six other people taking videos, he started yelling at the ICE agents. “I won’t even tell you any of the things that I said to them,” he said, “Most of it was unprintable. I wanted to distract them. And I wanted my neighbors to hear the commotion. … I just screamed as loud as I could. I said, ‘Don’t come out. Don’t answer the door.’” “I deliberately made sure not to approach the vehicles too close,” said Tim Doran. “I didn’t want to be accused of interfering with a federal officer or any other charge that they might have come up with.” Credit: Richard Cahan Doran hadn’t yelled that loud since he was a middle school teacher trying to silence a cafeteria full of kids. He wanted to catch the agents’ attention. “I think they were keeping an eye out for me because of the way I was yelling and screaming. They may not have known if I was going to go berserk.” His throat was still sore hours later. It happened so fast. Iuliana Pascu’s Ring security camera recorded the landscaper being taken into custody minutes after he arrived. “He started work at 11:35,” she said. “And at 11:38 they already had him, and people were screaming.” Other landscapers on the crew scattered, and a house painter working for Alan Teller pleaded to come into his house. “‘Immigration,’” Teller recounted the painter saying. He directed the man into his basement. “I said, ‘There’s a couch there. Don’t move. Stay here. You’re safe here. Stay here.” Cassidhe Hart ran out with her whistle. “I started blowing the signal. Three short blasts that ICE is present,” she said. “And then I could see that there was maybe a detention. And so I started doing the long blasts, the three long blasts for a detention.” Cassidhe Hart wears her whistle at the corner of Monroe Street and Sherman Avenue. Credit: Richard Cahan At least five ICE agents drove east down one-way Monroe in two vehicles, a red minivan and a black SUV with Maryland license plates. It seemed that one or two of the agents served as lookouts after they stopped the car. The others apprehended the suspect. “They roughly shoved him in the car and went on their way,” said Sarah Zematis. “It happened really fast,” Hart said, “so fast that those [the neighbors] who came out didn’t even realize at first that there was someone detained in one of the vehicles. If we knew that, maybe we would have worked harder to try to stop the vehicle from leaving. We weren’t sure if the goal was to get the vehicles out of the neighborhood or make them stop. It was very confusing.” Hart said she thinks the whistles did warn people in the neighborhood. At least one other landscaper and the painter managed to avoid ICE. A Tuesday night WGN report shows a man being thrown down and pinned to the ground by masked ICE agents before being taking into an unmarked vehicle and driven away. The landscaper named Carlos had been working at Nature’s Perspective since April, according to Paul Klitzkie, the firm’s general manager. Klitzkie did not want to release Carlos’ last name because of privacy, but he said the firm has been working with Carlos’ family since Tuesday. Klitzkie said his firm fills out all the paperwork, including a Form I-9, that employers use to verify a new employee’s identity. Klitzkie thanked the responders for their quick action. The incident, Klitzkie said, “was motivated by profiling.” The neighbors are planning to meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at a community park near Monroe and Custer Avenue. They are determined to be more vigilant. “We’re going to make a plan on the block, and if people are doing work or we see anything, we’re going to make sure that we’re protecting our block,” said Zematis. She handed out whistles Tuesday afternoon. And the neighbors will have the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights rapid response number — 855-435-7693 — programmed on their phone to report ICE activity. “I was just saying that I don’t need the rapid response number because I don’t really go anywhere,” said Pascu. “I’m not gonna see anything. But it happens right in the front of our house.” Tuesday was a moment for reflection. “I’ve had a few tears,” said Doran. “I haven’t been able to concentrate as much as I wanted to on my job. From a work perspective, it’s not been the most productive afternoon that I’ve ever had.” Alan Teller offered the man he helped a gift after the agents left. “I made a bag of seven apples for good luck.” After the raid, Zematis and Hart traveled to nearby schools on their own to watch the playgrounds at pickup time to be sure they were safe. “I’m very activated, definitely lots of adrenaline in that moment,” said Hart. “We were not in danger,” said Zematis. “We are in danger now that they [ICE agents] are here. They are throwing people to the ground on my sidewalk. We have children on this block. We don’t need this.” Most of the neighbors have deep immigrant ties. Teller’s wife, Jeri Zbiral, left Czechoslovakia in 1949 to escape Communist rule. “My family fled because people were walking down the street, getting picked up,” she said. “I’m 79 years old, and I never thought I’d see this,” said Alan Teller. Credit: Richard Cahan “Why do they have to throw people to the ground?” questioned Teller. “If you wanted to do this legitimately, you could. You don’t need to take somebody, drag them out of a car, throw them to the ground violently, zip tie their hands and then ask questions.” Iuliana Pascu is an immigrant from Romania who recently got her U.S. citizenship. It took her two decades. She worried for most of that time. “I hate people who say that immigrants should come here the right way. I came here the right way. But I had opportunities to do that,” she said. “These are people who are working hard and just trying to provide for their families.” Later, thinking about what happened, she said: “I just wish I could have helped.” Larry Bauer’s Jewish mother grew up in Germany in the 1920s and the ’30s. He remembers her telling him about storm troopers and how they intimidated people. He said he never thought those stories would apply to the United States. “These guys [the ICE agents] are wearing more body armor than any of those guys in Europe,” Bauer said. But his neighbors stood up to them on Tuesday. “They came out and were yelling.” Doran said he came out because of his religious beliefs (“treat the stranger and the immigrant with justice”) and because he saw the detention as a violation of the law. “To take somebody into custody because of the color of their skin or because of their first language is violation of due process,” he said. Doran is intent on paying more attention to the neighborhood. “I’m going to be on the lookout,” he said. “If they come back through, I’ll be back down there.” WGN News also reported late Tuesday night that ICE had picked up a second person near Monroe and Custer in the afternoon, about one block east of the morning raid. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights also said one person had been detained Tuesday morning near The Home Depot in Evanston. Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include mention of the ICE detention near The Home Depot.