Tolulope Akinsulie was asleep in his apartment when the Chicago ICE raid began. A boom woke him. He sat up, saw heavily armed federal agents pouring into his bedroom, and then felt teeth — a large dog clamping down on his right ankle. The animal dragged him to the floor and kept biting. His thighs. His hip. His wrist. He still has the scars.
Down the hall, a Venezuelan mother and her 16-year-old son were marched at gunpoint into another unit, where they watched agents kick a man on the floor and strike another with what looked like the butt of a rifle.
The boy started hyperventilating. Both of them were then zip-tied outside the building — despite the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated insistence that no children were restrained that night.
On the fifth floor, agents zip-tied a Mexican welder named José Miguel Jiménez López, took his Chicago ID, and ripped it up in front of him. “Here is another one,” one of them said.
This was September 30, 2025, in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. Approximately 300 federal agents — some descending from a Black Hawk helicopter — stormed a five-story apartment building, hurled flash grenades, broke down doors, and zip-tied dozens of immigrants and U.S. citizens inside.
A television crew tagged along to film it.
This week, 17 of the people taken that night, plus an 18th tenant detained outside the building a week earlier, filed formal administrative claims against DHS, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, the FBI, and the ATF.
Each is seeking roughly $5 million in damages — about $90 million in total, according to the ProPublica investigation that broke the news of the new accounts. Fifteen of the claimants are immigrants. Two are U.S. citizens.
What the Government Said vs. What Happened
The Trump administration justified the raid by claiming it had intelligence that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building, and that there were guns, drugs, and explosives inside. That was the public story.
It was the reason given for sending 300 agents, military hardware, and an air assault into a residential apartment complex full of families.
Eight months later, federal prosecutors have not filed a single criminal charge against anyone arrested that night. Not one.
ProPublica reporters who have interviewed 16 of the 37 people detained have found little evidence to support the government’s “gang-takeover” claim.
The government has since conceded that Akinsulie and others were likely arrested unlawfully, which is how he eventually got out in March.
DHS, asked about the claims this week, said the “operation was performed in full compliance with the law” and that the tenants are owed nothing. The department’s statement called its actions “appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from ‘dangerous criminal illegal aliens.’”
The dangerous criminal illegal aliens in question include a 1-year-old U.S. citizen who, according to one of the claims, screamed and cried in terror. At the same time, federal agents pointed guns at her family. Her 9-year-old brother had a panic attack. They were marched out of their home in their pajamas while their father was separated from them.
Any law enforcement officer or federal agent who points a weapon at a child or puts handcuffs on one — especially a child under 10 — should be fired. Immediately. No hearing, no union rep, no “ongoing investigation.” Fired. But what do I know? I’m just a bleeding-heart Left-Wing lunatic.
The Human Cost
What happened to the people in that building did not end when the Blackhawk helicopter flew away.
Jiménez, the welder, spent the next four months bouncing between detention facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana before being dumped at the Mexico border in February. He is now living in his childhood home in Guanajuato.
In his claim, he describes ICE officers treating him and others “as if they were sub-human and not entitled to basic dignity or respect.” He lost about $3,000 in property — a TV, a drill, the tools of his trade.
Those ICE officers should also be fired. It’s like hiring a nurse who hates sick people. Ridiculous. And people wonder why ICE agents are assaulting and shooting people — including U.S.citizens. They don’t view immigrants (Bkabk or brown people) as human. Trump worked extremely hard to dehumanize immigrants throughout his 2024 campaign.
“I have friends and family who are still there, and they are afraid,” he told ProPublica. “I wouldn’t like to see them go through what I had to go through.”
The Venezuelan mother and her teenage son were shipped to the Dilley detention center in Texas and held for three weeks. She now has trouble sleeping. Her son is seeing a psychiatrist to process what he saw that night.
Akinsulie, 42, is a devout Christian who has lived in Chicago since 2007 and has no criminal record. He spent his time in detention having nightmares about dogs chasing him, biting him, talking to him. The dreams stopped after he was released, but the pain did not.
He can’t stand for long. Pain shoots from his hip down to his foot. He used to play soccer. He can’t anymore. He worries the damage might be permanent. He can’t afford a doctor.
“There was no reason to do me like that,” he said.
What Tenants Lost — Beyond the Trauma
The claims also detail what was stolen or destroyed while people were detained: shoes, smartphones, Playstation consoles, jewelry, mattresses, toys, and vehicles.
One person lost a backpack containing $1,300 in cash. The apartment building itself was ordered shuttered late last year after a judge cited safety issues and code violations, forcing the U.S. citizens who lived there — some on public housing assistance — to relocate.
So in addition to the trauma, the detentions, and the deportations, the raid effectively erased an entire residential community.
Why This Lawsuit Matters
The Federal Tort Claims Act is one of the only legal tools available to people harmed by federal employees acting unlawfully [like fools]. It allows for compensation for physical injury, emotional distress, property damage, and death.
If the agencies don’t respond or settle within six months, or if they deny the claims, the tenants can sue in federal court.
This isn’t the only example of claims like these being filed. A pregnant U.S. citizen in California says she went into premature labor after being detained and shackled by federal agents.
A Marine Corps veteran says agents tackled him while he was protesting in Oregon.
A Chicago alderperson says she was sworn at, shoved, and handcuffed for questioning agents’ presence in a hospital emergency room.
Lawyers across the country are warning that dozens more claims are coming.
Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center, which worked on the Chicago case alongside MALDEF, the University of Chicago’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, and the MacArthur Justice Center, explained the strategy: “Hopefully this case and others will be a check against the most aggressive and reckless forms of [immigration] enforcement.”
A check. That’s what’s left when the agencies tasked with enforcing the law become the agencies most willing to break it.
The Chicago ICE Raid Was Televised
When 300 armed federal agents and a Black Hawk helicopter descend on an apartment building full of working people and their children based on intelligence that produces zero criminal charges, the question stops being whether mistakes were made. The question becomes whether the operation was ever about what it claimed to be about.
The South Shore ICE raid was televised. It was meant to be. It was a piece of political theater designed to show strength, to project the image of an administration cracking down on an invasion of dangerous gang members.
The federal agents involved in the Chicago ICE raid on September 30 brought their own film crew. Local news wouldn’t have made it in time, and Americans couldn’t be allowed to miss the show — the Black Hawk landing on the roof, the agents rappelling down the front of the building, the windows shattering on cue like a Mission Impossible audition tape. This had to be livestreamed.
Donald Trump sees life as a reality TV show and loves anyone who looks like they are “straight from central casting.” He wanted to put on a show for the American people who hate immigrants. His message: “Look how cruel and violent I’m being towards those criminal illegal aliens you hate?”
The cost of that performance was paid by a Nigerian man asleep in his bed, by a Venezuelan boy who watched federal agents kick a man on the floor, by a 1-year-old American citizen marched out of her home in her pajamas, by a welder who lost everything he owned.
There is no $5 million payout that gives any of them back what was taken. The claims aren’t about that. They are about a system finally being made to look itself in the face.
As Akinsulie put it: “Everybody can get a check and balance. People have to learn how to act right.”
