In the early hours of Sept. 30, 2025, the residents of a five-story apartment building in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood woke to the sound of federal agents storming their homes.
Agents from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) converged on the building shortly after midnight, reportedly backed by helicopters and flashbang grenades.
According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agents were looking for Tren de Aragua "members and their associates" as part of "Operation Midway Blitz," a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) effort aimed at targeting "criminal illegal aliens" who the DHS said "flocked" to Chicago because of the city's sanctuary policies. Agents pulled adults and children from the building, eventually making 37 arrests, including "multiple" Tren de Aragua members, authorities reported.
In the days after the operation, a claim (archived) circulated online that agents had zip-tied children to restrain them during the enforcement action.
For example, the Facebook page of the liberal outlet Occupy Democrats posted: "BREAKING: WTF? Trump's deportation goons ZIP TIE CHILDREN and said 'F*CK THEM KIDS' while conducting a TERRIFYING Gestapo-style door-to-door mass raid arresting people and dividing Blacks and Latinos to be taken away in vans!"
Similar claims circulated on X (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if the claim was true.
The claims appeared to stem from an eyewitness account by a neighbor to the South Shore building who told the South Side Weekly and ABC7 that she saw agents bringing children out of the building who were "zip-tied to each other."
On Oct. 5, 2025, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker repeated that claim during a CNN interview. Pritzker said he had asked the state's Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to investigate reports. A DCFS spokesperson confirmed via email the department was working "to gather a greater understanding of what took place during the South Shore raid."
The next day, on Oct. 6, 2025, the DHS released a statement addressing claims Pritzker had made about the Sept. 30 raid. In the DHS statement, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, "Children were never zip tied. This is a shameful and disgusting lie."
Snopes could not independently verify reports that children were zip-tied during the Sept. 30 South Shore enforcement action. Given the above, we leave this claim unrated.
We reached out to the eyewitness who said she saw children being zip-tied to ask for additional details about the claim. We also reached out to local groups working with immigrants in Chicago for any additional accounts corroborating the reported eyewitness or photo or video evidence. We reached out to the Illinois governor's office and the Illinois DCFS to ask how Pritzker evidenced his claim and for any comment on the reported investigation. We await replies to our queries.
Zip tie claim based on eyewitness testimony
A DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Oct. 7, 2025, that agents took four U.S. citizen children into custody during the Sept. 30, 2025, operation.
The parents of the four children did not have lawful status in the U.S., the DHS spokesperson said. Agents took the children into custody to ensure they were "not being trafficked, abused, or otherwise exploited."
"No children were handcuffed or restrained during this operation," the spokesperson said.
That account was at odds with the South Side Weekly and ABC7's eyewitness account. That eyewitness told ABC7:
I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner. They — 'cuz they was bringing the kids out too, had them zip tied to each other. That's all I kept asking, "Where's the morality, where's the human?" One of them literally laughed, he was standing right here. He said, "F*** them kids."
A spokesperson for the Invisible Institute, an independent journalism non-profit from the South Side of Chicago, told Snopes via email that its report in the South Side Weekly was based on four eyewitness sources, including the named person in ABC7's report. The other three sources wished to remain off the record, and none had video or photographic evidence of children being restrained by zip ties.
Other eyewitnesses speaking to ABC7 and Block Club Chicago did not specifically mention children in their accounts of the night but did say agents busted down their doors, took them outside and put them into unmarked vans to determine if they had arrest warrants or lacked legal status in the U.S.
Block Club Chicago published an image reportedly taken in the empty South Shore building the day after the raid that showed zip tie handcuffs on the floor next to baby clothes and a diaper. Footage from NewsNation, a news outlet whose reporter came along on the operation, showed adults in zip tie handcuffs being led from the building but did not show any children.
'Violent' operation stoked tensions between state and federal government
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a non-profit that promotes the rights of immigrants and refugees, described the South Shore operation as "a violent overnight raid" in a news release condemning Operation Midway Blitz actions in Chicago.
Such reports came at a time of tension between Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Trump administration. Pritzker and Johnson both opposed Operation Midway Blitz when the DHS announced it in September.
On Oct. 5, 2025, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed in a statement to NBC that U.S. President Donald Trump would send 300 National Guard troops to Illinois in addition to the additional ICE forces involved in Operation Midway Blitz.
During a news conference the next day, Pritzker accused the Trump administration of bringing "militarized" ICE and CBP agents to Chicago "to cause violence and chaos in this city." Pritzker said the governor's office was preparing federal lawsuits in response to what he called an "unconstitutional invasion."
On Oct. 7, Trump wrote (archived) on Truth Social that Pritzker and Johnson "should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers."
DHS law enforcement had made more than 800 arrests throughout Operation Midway Blitz, according to an Oct. 1 department news release. During this period, ICE agents in Chicago had fatally shot one person and injured another.
It was unclear at the time of this writing how long Operation Midway Blitz would last.