By: Ashmar Mandou

Chicago activists and residents called for more transparency Tuesday as officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigate an agent-involved shooting that left a man wounded. “We believe that regardless of the circumstances, when a civilian is shot, the community needs to know why,” said Juan Cruz, an organizer with Communities United. “There are a lot of questions the community has.”

During the Monday morning shooting, a special agent was attempting to arrest someone when a second person pointed a weapon at agents, according to ICE. ICE officials said the special agent fired his weapon, wounding the second person. At Tuesday’s rally and press conference outside the home of the victim, on the 6100 block of West Grand in the Belmont Cragin community, Alderman Gilbert Villegas (36th) said a CPD captain told him that city officers knew ICE agents would be in the area, but had no part in the raid until they responded to the shooting. Since then, his office has been flooded with hundreds of calls from residents concerned about immigration agents coming to their door, Villegas said. “People talking about, ‘Am I next? What can I do?’ And I don’t have an answer for them, other than to know they have rights,” said Villegas. “The coincidence of what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and what’s happing here, I don’t like it.”

The shooting showed what can happen “when ICE agents are unshackled,” said Sophie Vodvarka, communications coordinator for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). “You do not have to open the door unless an ICE agent has a warrant signed by a judge dated in the last six months,” Vodvarka said. A law enforcement official said Tuesday that federal agents recovered the gun that they say the 53-year-old pointed at them as they tried to serve an arrest warrant for his 23-year-old son. His son, who was born in the U.S., was questioned about his citizenship before being released without charges hours after the raid, according to family attorney Thomas Hallock. The son has a pending felony weapon charge stemming from a February arrest near the home, though it is unclear whether Monday’s raid was connected to that. Chicago Police are investigating the shooting, as is the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility.