‘They didn’t focus on anybody who didn’t look Mexican’

CHICAGO — In a parking lot just outside O’Hare International Airport on Monday afternoon, a man prayed next to his car as the plane took off.

Located just east of the airport’s Terminal 5, the parking lot is where Uber and Lyft drivers wait for ridesharing apps to assign them passengers. There drivers make phone calls and have lunch. Sometimes they pray.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Border Patrol officers arrested 18 people in O’Hare last Friday. Labor groups said immigration officers targeted ride-share drivers’ parking lots.

Stacy McCloud, who works at a food truck on the property, told the Tribune she saw it all.

McCloud said Monday that immigration officers came to the parking lot twice on Friday, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. They surrounded the area and blocked the entrance, he said.

When drivers realized immigration officials were there, McCloud said people started chanting “ICE, ICE” and “the whole parking lot was packed.”

“People were hitting each other with their cars,” he said. But they had nowhere to go.

McCloud said federal agents are asking drivers to provide their documentation. “They didn’t focus on anyone who didn’t look Mexican,” he said. “It seemed like everyone who was Mexican went straight there.”

McCloud worked at a food truck on the lot for two years. He spoke to the Tribune Monday among customers purchasing tacos and energy drinks. He had time to talk because business was slower than usual.

Ricardo Velasquez, a rideshare driver who had lunch in the trunk of his car that afternoon, said he was a U.S. citizen but that his non-U.S. citizens friends had stayed away from the airport.

“I feel bad for all my friends,” Velasquez said. “Everyone should have the right to work”

Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Border Patrol officers conducted a “targeted” operation in O’Hare and that the people arrested “all violated our nation’s immigration laws.”

“In the era of President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law, there will be consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the United States,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

McLaughlin named one person arrested Friday, describing him as a “criminal, illegal alien from Venezuela” who had previously been arrested for “domestic battery causing great bodily harm.”

The Tribune reviewed court records that show a man with the same name was charged with domestic battery in Cook County last year, but prosecutors later decided not to pursue charges against him. A police report lists his birthplace as Mexico, not Venezuela. It’s unclear whether the man is the same person McLaughlin was talking about.

McLaughlin did not provide details about the other people arrested.

McCloud said the agents in the parking lot Friday “showed no sympathy.”

“They were ripping everyone out of the cars,” he said. “Whoever showed up that they weren’t citizens, they were actually smashing cars.”

The Illinois Drivers Alliance, a labor coalition that aims to organize rideshare drivers across the state, condemned the raids, saying it was “deeply concerned that drivers’ due process rights have been violated at O’Hare.”

“This is part of a broader pattern of attacks on immigrant families by an administration that continues to weaponize fear and division,” said the Drivers Alliance, which is backed by local members of the Service Employees International Union and the International Machinists Union.

The O’Hare attack comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants in Chicago, which authorities claim has resulted in more than 1,000 arrests so far. Advocates raised concerns about the targeting of low-wage workers during the crackdown, as reports emerged of construction workers, street vendors and day laborers being detained by the feds.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement about the O’Hare immigration crackdown that his administration is working to ensure city property “is never used to facilitate illegal civil immigration enforcement.”

Last week, Johnson signed an executive order banning federal immigration officials from organizing and conducting enforcement operations on city-owned land. The mayor called for criminal charges to be filed against agents who violated the order.

Johnson spokesman Cassio Mendoza said the administration believes it has no legal recourse to pursue against the feds who raided the airport parking lot because no-immigration signs have yet been installed in the airport parking lot. Mendoza said such signs should be posted in the parking area soon.

Most of the spaces in the parking lot were empty on Monday afternoon. Drivers who were there said it was an unusual situation.

Uber driver Jim Weber was not present during Friday’s raids but said he disagreed with them.

Some of his ancestors came to the United States more than a century ago, fleeing pogroms in Europe without legal permission, he said.

“They snuck in from Canada,” Weber said. His family settled in the Upper Midwest, where his great-grandfather met his great-grandmother, raised his children and grandchildren, worked hard, and paid taxes.

“All he wanted was a better life,” Weber said. He thinks his fellow carpool drivers want this, too.

“They want a better life,” Weber said. “Who wouldn’t?”

———-

—Chicago Tribune’s Jonathan Bullington contributed.

____