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Attorney Scott Sakiyama stood in front of reporters in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Oct. 10. Paul Ivery, a 26-year-old intellectually disabled Black man and Oak Park local, was leaving the courthouse after enduring nearly two weeks of criminal proceedings. The government claimed Ivery assaulted a Border Patrol agent at a protest at the suburban Broadview ICE facility on Sept. 27, only to drop the case two weeks later. Sakiyama, a fellow Oak Park resident, didn’t represent Ivery in court but offered to act as a spokesperson for his family.
“If the case had gone forward, it probably would have lasted for months, and so it’s just such a relief to have it over now,” Sakiyama told reporters on Oct.10.
Ten days later, Sakiyama ended up in the back of a vehicle used by federal immigration agents himself. The masked agents detained him at gunpoint on the morning of Oct. 20 and brought him to the same Broadview ICE facility. He sat in the vehicle with agents for about a half hour outside the facility before another agent gave him a citation for impeding a federal officer.
They then returned him to his own car and wished him a good day, he said.
The federal agents’ actions, Sakiyama said a day later, left him shaken.
“I feel like I’ve just been running on adrenaline the last 24 hours,” he told The TRiiBE.
The citation issued to Sakiyama accuses him of “cutting off [an] agent’s vehicle,” a claim he disputes. Sakiyama told The TRiiBE he had been following the agents’ vehicle in Oak Park on Oct. 20 with his passenger-side window down, while blowing on a whistle to let neighbors know agents were in the area.
Video of Sakiyama’s arrest, which has been shared online in Facebook comments with his consent, shows agents pulling him out of his car located behind their own vehicle, not in front of it.
“They said I was impeding them, that I had cut them off, which was just a complete fabrication,” Sakiyama said.
Sakiyama said one of the agents began recording him through the back window of their vehicle, a gray minivan, even before the stop that led to his arrest. He said federal agents jumped out the van with their guns drawn at the intersection of Harvard Street and S. Grove Avenue, and threatened to smash his car’s driver-side window. His claims are corroborated by the available video.
“Exit your vehicle, or we’re gonna break your window and we’ll drag you out,” an agent can be heard saying in the footage.
The masked agents did eventually remove him from his car, and he shouted his name to people watching nearby. Sakiyama was then taken away in the agents’ minivan while another agent moved his vehicle off the road.
“I didn’t move, I didn’t resist… eventually they got the doors open,” he said.
The arrest occurred right across the street from Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, where Sakiyama said one of his children is enrolled. He said the school enacted a security protocol for students’ safety after his arrest; Oak Park Elementary School District 97 did not return a request for confirmation on that point. Nevertheless, Sakiyama said knowing the armed and masked men were so close to his child’s school made the encounter personal.
“This happened outside their school,” Sakiyama said. “It hits different.”
While in the agents’ custody, Sakiyama said, he got a sense of who they are and how they view their mission. He said the agents didn’t immediately know how to get back to the Broadview facility from suburban Oak Park, about a 15-minute drive away.
“They were clearly not from around the area,” he said. “They didn’t know how to get back to Broadview, what exit to take.”
He added that, while waiting in the minivan for his citation, he caught a glimpse of the agents in the vehicle with him receiving text messages from a group chat called “Chiraq Team 2.”
He shared his frustration with the situation in a Facebook post Monday evening.
“To be clear, the federal government is intent on abusing its power to kidnap and violate the rights of our friends and neighbors, and now, they say it is a crime to tell your neighbors this is happening,” Sakiyama wrote. “That is the world we are living in.”
Sakiyama is not the first U.S. citizen to be detained in the Chicago area, much less in the country, as President Donald Trump’s far-right administration further escalates its mass deportation campaign. ProPublica reported on Oct. 16 that immigration agents have held over 170 citizens since the start of Trump’s second term.
Sakiyama now joins their ranks, though he has already become a known presence in the unfolding story of the so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” taking place in Chicagoland. He has attended protests at Broadview, participated in rapid response organizing for the Oak Park area, and supported Ivery’s family through their own brush with militarized Border Patrol personnel.
For his literal whistle blowing, the attorney now faces a court date of his own this January; another casualty of what he said was ICE and Border Patrol’s intimidation tactics against Chicagoland residents.
He remained confident those intimidation tactics won’t hold up in court.
“It’s a tactic to chill free speech,” Sakiyama said. He added, “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m gonna trust in the legal system for now.”
His legal situation aside, Sakiyama is concerned that he now has a target on his back, both for his own and his family’s sake. But he added that, despite the fear, he still planned to protest the militarized immigration raids ripping through Chicago communities as “Operation Midway Blitz” rolls on.
“I feel it’s very important to do,” he said, “even if it feels exhausting right now.”
