On the afternoon of Sept. 11 federal agents detained two River Forest residents who had allegedly overstayed work visas and quickly deported them to Slovakia, their country of origin.
While ICE has now twice denied any role in the action, it is uncertain what agency the multiple officers represented. On Sept. 22, Elizabeth Ray, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs & Border Protection, said, “CBP Chicago did not commence until Sept. 16. The below incident was not us.”
The agents were described by a neighbor of the couple who lived in the same apartment building in northeast River Forest as wearing military gear, carrying rifles, with three of the four agents fully masked.
The witness, who reached out to Wednesday Journal and asked that her name not be used, said her encounter began with heavy knocking on her second-floor apartment door. “No one knocks on my door,” she said. She asked who was there and the response was, “Police.”
When she opened the door there were four agents and her neighbors’ small dog. She was told her neighbor had been detained and, as a courtesy, they were delivering the dog to her. “Will you take the dog or not?” the officer asked. When she asked who had detained her neighbor, the agent said, “We can’t tell you that.”
Another neighbor, who also contacted the Journal but asked not to be identified, described the couple as “Good people. Good friends. These are not rapists or robbers or the worst of the worst. They are hard-working people who pay taxes.”
He said the husband worked as a craftsman laying hardwood floors. “That is hard, sweaty work. Not many Americans want to do that work.”
At the request of neighbors, Wednesday Journal is not naming the couple as they continue efforts to settle their affairs in Illinois.
The couple were transported to O’Hare Airport where they were placed in holding cells and told they would be quickly deported. The intervention of a social service agency resulted in the woman being able to provide a list of essential items they could take with them if they could be retrieved quickly. Phones, laptops, passports and other small things were delivered back to the airport before they were put on a flight to Europe.
Mostly, both neighbors said, the couple are concerned about being reunited with their dog who was described as being “precious and little and shaking like you wouldn’t believe.” The current hope is that another friend can fly with the dog in October and return him to the couple.
On entering the couple’s apartment, the first neighbor said that lunch was laid out on the table – hard boiled eggs and salami – and that the woman had been in the shower.
She described the couple as “being very well loved” in the neighborhood, a place they have lived for better than 10 years. Both neighbors estimated them to be in their mid-30s to early 40s.
They came to America on legal work visas, which eventually expired. They worked unsuccessfully to get an extension during President Donald Trump’s first term. “In the second term,” a neighbor said, “they were afraid to approach anyone in the government.”
Asked why they immigrated to America 12 years ago, the second neighbor said, “Why does anyone come to America? A job. Education. Opportunity. Now you’d be a fool to come to America.”
The couple have now been back in Slovakia for a week. Neighbors and friends have been able to talk with them and continue to work on the logistics of selling off the couple’s truck and shipping some items to them in Europe.
“They are very upset about how it went down,” said the second neighbor. “But they are handling it better than I am. They’re freer now than they were when they were here,” he said.
“How the hell can this happen in this country? This is not the America I grew up in, that my parents grew up in,” he said.
