A CBS reporter said ICE agents fired a pepper ball at her truck outside a detention facility in Chicago late Sunday morning.
CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei said in a police report that she was driving toward the entrance of the facility on 25th Avenue with her window down when a masked ICE agent inside the fence shot a pepper ball that struck her driver’s side panel.
The impact released chemical agents on the inside of her vehicle. Rezaei said the powder burned her face and caused her to vomit.
She also noted there were no active protest or protesters at the facility at the time of the incident.
“At this moment it’s not really clear why that officer took a shot at me. My car has been here several times, although I did not identify myself verbally as a member of the press. There were no protests going on,” Rezaei said in her report on CBS. “There was actually nobody there except one other person that was a member of a fire department that was there checking in on the buildings around this area.”
Broadview, Illinois Police Chief Thomas Mills confirmed the incident and said his department has launched a criminal investigation “into an allegedly unprovoked attack on a CBS Chicago TV news reporter’s vehicle by a chemical munition fired from the direction of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement detention facility.”
