Rafael Veraza and Evelin Herrera were headed to Sam’s Club in Cicero with their 1-year-old daughter Saturday for diapers, eggs, milk and other groceries, when they heard car horns and helicopters. Just across the city line, federal agents were descending on Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood.

As they pulled into the parking lot at the intersection of Ogden Avenue and 26th Street, the Berwyn couple saw a convoy of federal vehicles driving toward them. Herrera took her phone out to record, following the advice of her mother. They decided to turn around.

A few seconds later, a black car, traveling the opposite direction from them, rolled past. Herrera’s video shows a masked, helmeted man pointing a pepper-spray gun through his open window and firing into the car. A wave of a yellow-orange cloudy substance hits Veraza, 25, in the face. Herrera, 24, turned around to the backseat and saw their baby girl, Arianna Sofia, with her eyes screwed shut.

Black vehicles continued to roll past as Veraza pulled over. Bystanders rushed to wash out the family’s faces.

“My first thought was my daughter,” Veraza said. “I didn’t even care if it got to me.”

On Sunday, Arianna clambered onto a rolling chair inside the nonprofit New Life Centers in Little Village and munched on a banana as her parents recounted their first interaction with Operation Midway Blitz.

The pepper-spraying was part of the latest federal incursion into Little Village, where agents, including Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, have repeatedly deployed chemical crowd controls up and down 26th Street and faced off with furious residents as part of the Trump administration’s blitz targeting undocumented immigrants.

Neighbors, activists and politicians flooded the area to demand that agents get out of town, film their actions and tail their convoy as it moved through Little Village, Lawndale and Tri-Taylor, where agents regrouped at the FBI headquarters. The chaos followed a report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that someone had shot at a car of agents near 26th Street and Kedzie Avenue. Chicago police responded to the intersection, but said there had been no report of any person shot.

Representatives with the Department of Homeland Security didn’t address the Veraza family’s run-in in a statement, only saying that people “stalked” the federal convoy into the Sam’s Club parking lot and that one Border Patrol vehicle was rammed during that confrontation. Per the statement, federal agents arrested nine people, eight of whom were citizens, over the course of the morning.

At a nearby hospital Saturday afternoon, doctors called poison control for Arianna and washed Veraza’s face and ears with saline. His whole face had gone numb, he said.

They had known about the federal operations in and around Chicago, but had not encountered any agents in the two months they’d been in the city. They have not been involved in the protests against the blitz. The closest they’ve gotten, they said, was that Veraza has colleagues at his job as a sales representative who are afraid to come to work, and his brother attended one of the massive “No Kings” protests downtown.

Arinna wore tiny pigtails on top of her head and peered over the conference table, occasionally reaching out to offer someone a crayon. On Saturday, she’d stared silently from her mother’s lap as a woman washed her father’s head on a grassy hill by the Sam’s Club.

Since the pepper-spraying, Arianna has been clingier and doesn’t want to be left alone anymore, Veraza said. Herrera does not want to return to Sam’s Club. When she is old enough to understand, Herrera said they would walk her through what had happened to their family in the most straightforward way they could.

Southwest Side politicians and civic leaders condemned Saturday’s federal sweep of Little Village as “state-sponsored terrorism” at a news conference Sunday — particularly the fact that young children like Arianna were becoming part of collateral damage from the raids.

“Each and every single time, they left destruction in their wake,” said state Sen. Celina Villanueva, a Chicago Democrat. “We deserve to have 1-year-olds not be pepper-sprayed when they are trying to go shopping. What the president of this country is doing is terrorism. We have to call it what it is.”

A federal judge was so alarmed by agents’ use of tear gas, pepper balls and other less lethal ammunition in places like the neighborhood’s well-known discount mall that she issued an expansive order barring the use of those munitions except in situations where agents are actively under threat. Even then, the order requires agents to issue two warnings before they deploy tear gas or other irritants on civilians.

Politicians and leaders at the news conference said they had not heard any warnings about the deployment of crowd controls. Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, described watching an arrest in front of a bank at 26th Street and Pulaski Road, and a flash-bang detonating a few feet from a 6-year-old boy..

“People were vociferously protesting,” he said. “They were pissed. They were mad. The next thing we know, we’re all ducking for cover.”

Rafael Veraza and Evelin Herrera hold their 1-year-old daughter, Arinna Sofia Veraza, on Nov. 9, 2025, in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Veraza, for his part, didn’t understand why agents were spraying cars at Sam’s Club or why they weren’t taking more care to keep children out of the way as they clashed with neighbors and made arrests.

“(Neighbors) might be protesting, but they’re not doing anything,” he said. “What’s the reason, exactly? Because they got kicked out of Little Village?”

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Arianna Sofia Veraza’s name. 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/09/cicero-pepper-spray-family-immigration-raids/