![\"Residents](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/1faddb5\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2893x3005+0+0\/resize\/840x873!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F9f%2F20%2F948acca74d2d8e3799f0c6674ca6%2Fgraycrop.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAmid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door. On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help. \u201cI wasn\u2019t planning on letting her stay, but I didn\u2019t know what the hell was going on,\u201d the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed. \u201cI didn\u2019t want them to take her,\u201d said the man, who didn\u2019t want to be named because he fears he\u2019ll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave her my bedroom, and I just told her, \u2018Just stay there. Don\u2019t open, don\u2019t, shh, just stay quiet,\u2019\u201d he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears. At one point, he went outside to check on things. He said ICE shouted at him to \u201cshut my door, get the f–k inside, and don\u2019t open my door again.\u201d The man had befriended the mom and girl in the building\u2019s laundry room. They are among a group of Venezuelan immigrants who moved in over the past year, some with state rental assistance for asylum seekers and others without a lease, according to one longtime resident.<\/p>\n
During the Sept. 30 raid, residents, migrants, including the woman\u2019s husband, and squatters alike were zip-tied in the middle of the night. Other residents \u2014 like the man who helped his neighbors hide \u2014 were left undisturbed by ICE agents, prompting questions about what federal authorities knew about the building\u2019s occupants ahead of time and how they obtained that information. Remnants of the raid and interviews with residents who lived through it reveal some hints, including a mysterious map of the building found in the complex and makeshift door stickers that took inventory of occupants in some units. Federal agents that night arrested 37 people. They claimed some arrested \u201care believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federal officials also said the surrounding South Shore neighborhood was \u201ca location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.\u201d Few details have been disclosed about how federal agents came to that conclusion about that Venezuelan gang or determined who to target. None of the residents who spoke with WBEZ and Sun-Times reporters in the days after the raid said they had seen any signs of an international criminal enterprise operating out of the building.<\/p>\n
Days before the raid, the man who sheltered the mother and her daughter saw someone he believed to be a worker from the building taking pictures of the units \u201cwhere the Venezuelans lived.\u201d WBEZ and Sun-Times reporters also found a map crumpled up on the floor in the entryway of an apartment. It labeled each unit inside the five-floor building as \u201cvacant,\u201d \u201ctenant\u201d or as \u201cfirearms.\u201d Some units appeared to be marked as both \u201ctenant\u201d and \u201cfirearm.\u201d <\/p>\n
This is a re-creation of a map found in the apartment complex at 7550 S. South Shore Drive after the Sept. 30 federal raid. This map does not include unit numbers and is not an exact replica of any of the floors in building to protect the safety of residents. But otherwise it is an exact replica of how the four floors of the building were mapped.<\/p>\n
Doors of raided units were also marked with what appeared to be some sort of makeshift sticker system. White stickers, made with duct tape and a marker, labeled as \u201cPC\u201d hung on doors of units that had been broken down. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Residents at the raided South Shore building said white stickers labeled with \u201cPC\u201d hung on doors of units that had been broken down.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if the stickers went up before, during or after the raid. One resident indicated a separate set of orange stickers, some listing the occupants inside the apartment, went up during the raid. Introduction to the Incident Amid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door. On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help. \u201cI wasn\u2019t planning on letting her stay, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-reports"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/ab3d469\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5998x3424+0+289\/resize\/1461x834!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fa9%2Fcd%2F12151df0483e91108aaeb35c4299%2Fsouthshoreraidfolo-100225-27.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30094,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30091\/revisions\/30094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<img class="Image" alt=’A resident at the South Shore building said make-shift stickers labeled with the number of occupants per apartment like this one labeled "2 adults, 2 kids" were stuck on the unit doors during the raid on Sept. 30. ‘ srcset="https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/6c70087\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3024×2709+0+0\/resize\/840×753!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"