Patrick Gilmore was on his way to the Clark/Lake CTA train station with a friend Sunday afternoon when they came across a line of federal immigration agents near the Dearborn Street Bridge downtown and unexpectedly stumbled onto a viral moment.
As Gilmore waited to cross the street, a cyclist approached, taunted the agents and — after a brief exchange — jetted off west along Wacker Drive as agents chased after him, Gilmore, 25, recalled in a recent interview with the Tribune.
Those moments, captured on video garnered widespread attention online, felt surreal, Gilmore said.
“It just felt like we were in an actual movie,” he said.
On North Michigan Avenue, from Tribune Tower to Millennium Park, dozens of federal immigration agents were seen patrolling downtown Chicago on Sunday afternoon. The federal presence, which even included U.S. Customs and Border Protection boats on the Chicago River, was widely filmed and circulated on social media, including — and especially — the footage Gilmore watched unfold in real time.
In show of force, dozens of armed federal immigration agents patrol downtown Chicago
The viral video has been the subject of numerous articles online, from the New York Post to BuzzFeed, and racked up millions of views and thousands of likes, reposts and comments.
EXCLUSIVE: Earlier today ICE agents chase after a man in downtown Chicago after he made verbal comments but no physical or threatening contact. The man was able to get away. pic.twitter.com/uOiHXSmQny
— Christopher Sweat (@SweatEm) September 28, 2025
The 18-second clip, captured and posted on X by Christopher Sweat, shows a cyclist in a brown jacket approaching agents at the northeast corner of Dearborn and Wacker then quickly dashing away as agents start to pursue him. Seven seconds into the clip, the cyclist is seen hopping on his bike and pedaling away down Wacker with agents trailing behind.
In a longer version of the video viewed by the Tribune, the cyclist, before the chase, is seen repeatedly calling out “I’m not a U.S. citizen” and “come on” to agents. The cyclist then appears to drop something, after which an agent is heard saying, “You dropped your phone.” As the cyclist goes to pick up his phone, agents start their pursuit.
Asked about the exchange, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement, “Midway Blitz was launched to remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists — from Chicago communities.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, nowhere is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens,” the statement continued. “If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”
“It was a crazy moment,” Gilmore, of Lakeview, said. “Like wow, this is the world we’re living in today. Politics aside, it was just really crazy to be around.”
Gilmore, who’s from New Jersey but has lived in Chicago for three years, was downtown Sunday to grab lunch with a friend from college who was in town. After lunch, Gilmore walked his friend back to his River North hotel before he was set to grab a train to O’Hare International Airport, Gilmore said.
Walking through downtown, they ran into a large group of federal immigration agents. Just after 2 p.m., he and his friend found themselves at the Dearborn Street Bridge.
Gilmore said the cyclist repeatedly told the agents that he wasn’t an American citizen. At first, the agents didn’t engage, then one agent asked the cyclist to clarify what he was saying, Gilmore said.
After the exchange and subsequent chase, agents continued walking down Wacker, Gilmore said. Altogether, “it felt like an hour, but it was probably (a few minutes),” he said.
“It almost didn’t feel like I was just at home in Chicago at that time,” Gilmore said. “It just felt like I had never seen … or witnessed anything like that.”
In an interview with the Tribune on Tuesday, videographer Sweat said he followed the agents through downtown Sunday when he caught the viral moment.
Sweat, 36, has been covering protests across the country — and particularly in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. — over the past year as part of a startup he recently launched, GrayStak Media, which Sweat said focused on “hyperlocal media and political risk analytics.”
Sweat left his Streeterville home to catch the federal activity downtown after a friend sent him a video of agents at Millennium Park, he said.
“I was like, ‘Well, I guess I better go see what’s going on because I haven’t seen them operate in the city center like that before,” Sweat said. He ended up following agents for about two hours, he said.
Since posting his viral clip, the footage has taken on a life of its own, Sweat said.
“I think the significance of the video is that on the global left, it signifies a sort of resistance,” Sweat said. “But for the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, it signals a lack of training and preparation. And they’re testing out these capabilities in our community. … And that’s what I captured in real time, is that urban test run in the city of Chicago.”
