President Donald Trump’s administration continues to enforce aggressive immigration policies, flooding Democratic-led cities with federal agents, raiding workplaces that have immigrant staff members, and deporting noncitizens in steep numbers — even, more rarely, going so far as to deport citizens. Clashes between protesters and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have erupted at agency facilities across the country, with political figures numbering among the demonstrators. In New York City, for example, 11 elected officials were detained on September 18 for demanding entry to ICE detention cells.
... While participating in a protest outside an ICE facility in Broadview on the morning of September 19, Abughazaleh was thrown to the ground by a federal agent, according to video footage she posted online. She told Teen Vogue she’d been attempting to prevent a fellow protester from being run over by a vehicle departing the ICE facility grounds, which protesters were trying to block from leaving.
Two other candidates in the race for Illinois’ reliably Democratic 9th Congressional District seat, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and Bushra Amiwala, were also at the protest. Biss posted on X that “federal forces” tear-gassed him and other protesters during the demonstration, calling it a “terrifying escalation.”
Abughazaleh, a former journalist who’s garnered attention for her political social media content as well as her progressive campaign platform, also told Teen Vogue that the recorded incident was not the first time “ICE has thrown me on the ground” — let alone that day — but it was the “most violent,” compared with earlier federal law enforcement actions she’d experienced at protests at the Broadview facility.
Said Abughazaleh, “If they are willing to do this to a congressional candidate in front of a bunch of press, imagine what they're doing behind boarded-up windows.”
