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.

In a suburb west of Chicago earlier this month, activist and US House candidate Kat Abughazaleh was involved in a confrontation between federal agents and protesting politicians. At 26, Abughazaleh is currently the youngest candidate actively campaigning in the Democratic primary race for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District. 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.”

The video Abughazaleh posted of the incident went viral on social media soon after she shared it. The clip — and Abughazaleh — drew support from more progressive corners of the internet for her willingness to participate in the protest, as well as sharp ire from online conservative groups and media personalities like Trump ally Laura Loomer. “I love watching communists get body slammed by ICE. Communist and Palestinian. Pick a struggle,” Loomer wrote on X. (Abughazaleh responded with a fundraising repost that saw far more engagement: “Donate to my campaign to make Laura Loomer’s day worse.”)

Fox News host Laura Ingraham praised ICE agents for their actions while discussing the incident on her show, saying, “A Democrat congressional candidate… was thrown to the ground by an ICE agent. Good work.” The Department of Homeland Security posted about it on X, saying, “Individuals and groups impeding ICE operations are siding with vicious cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals. You will not stop @ICEgov and DHS law enforcement from enforcing our immigration laws.” And in a press release, DHS called the protesters “violent rioters” and claimed they “assaulted law enforcement” at the Broadview ICE facility.

Abughazaleh wrote on Bluesky that she and other protesters continued to face violence as the day went on: “They just tear-gassed us. They tried to run us over in a van holding a peaceful protester. They shot us with pepper balls. They dragged another protester into the facility.”

The greater Chicago area has been the subject of intense scrutiny from right-wing political figures in recent months amid the Trump administration's purported efforts to address crime and violence in major Democrat-run cities. After the administration deployed the National Guard to Washington, DC, in August based on that same premise, one of the cities Trump set his sights on was Chicago, despite the city's falling violent-crime rate in recent years. But the president's claim that he was considering sending federal troops into the city prompted pushback from Illinois leaders and residents, and initially, he backed down.

Instead, earlier in September, DHS ramped up its immigration enforcement actions in the area, starting with a crackdown called Operation Midway Blitz. Hundreds of individuals were reportedly arrested in roughly just the first two weeks of the crackdown. Later in the month, a Border Patrol deportation campaign that started in California, Operation at Large, was expanded to Illinois; following this expansion, scores of federal agents, including Border Patrol officers, were reportedly spotted patrolling Chicago’s downtown area this past weekend.

Ultimately, despite ongoing pushback from Illinois leaders, on September 29, US military officials announced that 100 National Guard troops would be deployed to Chicago. Governor J.B. Pritzker, who continues to be a loud opponent of federal immigration actions in the state, said in a press conference that day that a DHS memo claimed the troops were needed to protect ICE facilities as the enforcement crackdown continues. The announcement came days after Trump said on Truth Social that he planned to send the National Guard into Portland to crack down on anti-ICE protests there; Portland, along with the state of Oregon, sued the administration to block the action.