When masked federal agents arrived at the Swap-O-Rama flea market, the people standing between the might of the United States government and the livelihoods of the immigrants who make up its vendors and customer base were working-class employees in red sweaters.
They faced armed federal agents wearing camo and bearing guns.
“One of our people said this is private property and they said to that person, ‘If you resist we’ll arrest you, we’re coming in anyway,’” Ted Joseph, the flea market’s co-owner, told the Tribune.
A battery of armed agents covering their faces entered the open-air shopping staple of the Back of the Yards neighborhood Thursday morning and took a number of people away. Community members said there were more than a dozen arrests. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment, but in a post on X Friday said 13 had been detained in the raid and alleged they were guilty of various crimes but provided no specifics and did not release any names.
As residents shouted “Get out!” agents marched through Swap-O-Rama, a market where community vendors rent spots to sell everything from household goods to homegrown tomatoes. Immigration officers removed a man in a Bears shirt and a woman in a gray sweater. As they led her from the market, the woman held her hands in front of her as if in prayer. She cried for “mis hijos,” my sons, as a man urged the agents to let her go.
They ignored him.
As President Donald Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” continues ripping through the city’s immigrant communities, businesses across Chicago have pledged support to immigrant communities by posting “ICE is not welcome here” signs in storefront windows.
But in heavy immigrant neighborhoods, like the Back of the Yards community where Swap-O-Rama is located, protecting customers and employees is not theoretical. The raids have forced lower-wage workers to make an agonizing choice: whether to risk their own already precarious livelihoods and safety to protect the well-being of their neighbors and customers. It’s a reality pitting employees against employers, customers against businesses.
In the aftermath of the raid, some blamed Swap-O-Rama for letting federal agents onto the premises. On social media, calls for a boycott emerged. As Joseph spoke to the Tribune, a Latino man shouted at him for not doing enough to protect the community.
“Ninety percent of your customers are Mexicans!” the man said.
“I’m trying to do what I can do within the framework of the law to keep people safe,” Joseph said.
“Our vendors are wonderful people, they’re family people. They buy houses, they pay their taxes, they don’t deserve this type of treatment,” Joseph added. “But I’m not going to put my employees in harm’s way.”
Swap-O-Rama has been around Chicago for more than 50 years. It’s been set up at 41st and Ashland Avenue since 1992 and is a staple in the community.
“People come here for their produce, their vegetables, their home supplies, their clothing, their needs,” Joseph said. “They get it at a good price and are treated fairly by the vendors.”
Since Trump’s inauguration, Joseph said, that’s changed. Business is down.
“They’re afraid to come out. They’re afraid to shop,” Joseph said. “It goes full circle and affects the community because people don’t have the wherewithal to go out.”
About a mile away from Swap-O-Rama, around the same time, another small business took a different approach when federal agents showed up outside.
Adan Guerra, 26, first saw a caravan of cars pull into the alley behind his family’s auto shop around 10:20 a.m. Thursday. Video footage he shared with the Tribune shows at least seven vehicles, white SUVs alongside three black minivans and a silver pickup truck, rolling through.
Most of the men inside the cars were masked, Guerra said, but a few seemed to be in plainclothes.
Guerra guessed that the agents were using the alley as a place to regroup and plan their next steps. He walked over, told them it was a private alley and to get out.
In a video shared with the Tribune, a masked agent in the passenger seat asks Guerra, “What’s up with you? Just watching what we’re doing?”
“Yeah,” Guerra replied. “I have to.”
Asked why, Guerra said, “It’s us against y’all.”
The agent in the passenger seat asked if Guerra is a U.S. citizen and claimed they are protecting U.S. citizens.
“I don’t want your protection,” Guerra said.
He pointed out someone he believed was Mexican in the back seat, and the agents drove away.
A few hours later, Guerra leaned against one of the cars parked in rows outside the auto shop and said he felt disgusted and worried. His hands still had machine grease on them.
“I feel like they’re just coming here to spread more racism (and) hatred, or maybe some of them have their own personal agenda, I don’t know,” he said.
A few men who worked at the shop peered out from the doorway. A volunteer brought the workers a sign to put on the door that declared the building private property.
Another volunteer spoke on the phone with a 27-year-old woman who said federal agents had arrested her father outside their family’s McKinley Park home.
The woman, who declined to give her name, said her dad’s phone location had last registered in the alley outside the auto shop. She’d driven to the alley and seen several agents gathering there around 11 a.m.
They were taking people out of cars and putting them in different ones as more vehicles rolled up, she said. She had not caught a glimpse of her father and had heard since that he had been taken to the ICE processing center in Broadview.
Claudia Galeno-Sanchez and a few other neighborhood residents lingered in the alley in case federal immigration agents returned. She had a pair of pink goggles tucked under her arm and a small orange whistle hung around her neck. The 48-year-old said she is a U.S. citizen, but she hasn’t felt like one since the Trump administration took over and particularly not since the start of Operation Midway Blitz.
“They are not coming to protect us,” she said, craning her neck to see the traffic on 43rd Street.
“They are coming to terrorize our communities. This is like an attack against people of color. And we won’t tolerate it.”
Chicago Tribune’s Laura Rodríguez Presa contributed.
