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UPDATE 10/25/2025 — There is a GoFundMe to support the legal battle for Laugh Factory Night Manager Nate Griffin. It was created last night by Tom Pinney, who identifies himself as Griffin’s brother-in-law. Pinney said Griffin resurfaced about four hours after his detainment, “awaiting a hearing for a federal assault charge which could carry 8 years in prison if convicted.”
Griffin also wrote a post on Facebook last night after his release. “Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me. I am home, released on bond, but I am OK. Shaken up, but OK,” Griffin wrote.
Also last night, Kevin Eberhardt commented on The TRiiBE’s Instagram page, identifying himself as a resident of the home on Lakewood Avenue in Lakeview where federal agents detained a laborer working on the building. “We were in Toronto but rushed home when we saw this happen,” Eberhardt said in the comment. “There was no warrant. We’re trying to figure out the next steps for the individual that was violently detained here and have been in contact with the company he works for. You all that came out to confront these people are the actual patriots. Please don’t ever forget that and keep coming out to support these individuals being terrorized in our city.”
ORIGINAL STORY — Ryan Oliver, a standup comedian who works as a part-time custodian at the Laugh Factory, was inside the comedy club on Chicago’s North Side when he heard shouting from outside. That prompted him to leave Laugh Factory to see what was happening.
“I was trying to look through the glass, and I seen a bunch of people holding cell phones. And then I went outside,” Oliver said. “It was a Latino man. He was on the ground getting picked up by what looked to be federal officers. He was getting put in an unmarked car.”
Oliver said he saw the laborer, who was working on the building, being detained by federal officers as he had “blood “coming out [of] his nose and down his mouth.”
The laborer was one of two people who were detained by federal agents Friday morning at Broadway and Belmont Avenue on Chicago’s North Side. The second person detained was Oliver’s coworker Nate Griffin, who works as a night manager at the Laugh Factory.
It’s unclear why both individuals were detained. The Uptown/Edgewater Rapid Response Team released a community alert, verifying the presence of federal agents in the area. They also shared that two people were detained at 9:20 a.m. at Broadway and Belmont Avenue near Laugh Factory.
After the laborer was taken away, Oliver said, someone threw a water bottle at the agents’ SUV, but that the agents just berated the man and left the scene. Oliver said he went back inside to work only to hear screams from outside about “five or 10 minutes later.”
Those screams came from his coworker, who was being detained.
“So I went back outside, and this time, I seen that there was a white SUV parked right at the corner there, and there were a few municipal police officers, and there were at least four or five federal agents, and they were arresting Nate, my co-worker,” Oliver said. “By the time I came out, then Nate was on the ground, and they were picking him up and pushing him against the open car door.”
Video footage obtained by The TRiiBE shows federal agents pulling Griffin as he holds on to a scaffold. Bystanders screamed at the agents, saying “Show your face,” as they detained Griffin. Multiple bystanders recorded videos and demanded that the agents stop their actions and asked, “Where are you taking him?”
Oliver said he called his boss after the incident and went to talk to bystanders to understand what happened. Chicago Police officers also were at the scene. Oliver said one police officer told him they had nothing to do with federal agents detaining Griffin.
“He told me that Nate may have hit the car door, and that’s why he got arrested,” Oliver recalled the officer telling him.
Oliver said the other bystanders confirmed that Griffin may have hit the agent’s car door. One masked agent at the scene can be seen speaking into a phone, saying, “assault on an officer.”
Curtis Shaw Flagg, the creative director at the Laugh Factory, said bystanders alerted him of the incident as it was happening through phone calls. Flagg said Griffin, who lives in the same building where the Laugh Factory operates, was leaving his home with his mother when agents pulled up in a white SUV, exited the vehicle, and attacked him and his mother.
Laugh Factory is located at Broadway and Belmont Avenue in Lakeview, which is located in Chicago’s 44th Ward. The area is predominantly white and one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city.
“He has not done anything wrong. They’re about to kidnap this man, and then they put him in the white SUV and pull off,” Flagg said, explaining what he saw on video. “And as we all know, we have no record, no information, of where they’re being taken. No information outside of just he’s gone.”
Flagg described the Chicago Police officers at the scene as being at the “right place, right time, wrong person.”
In the video, Griffin addressed the police officers as he was dragged away by the agents. He can be heard saying, “Officers, you’re letting this happen,” as an agent grabbed him by his neck and placed him in the SUV.
In an emailed statement to The TRiiBE, the Chicago Police Department said:
“Chicago Police Department officers responded to a call of a battery in progress at Belmont Avenue and Broadway at approximately 9:19 a.m. Upon arrival, officers observed federal agents engaged in a physical altercation with two individuals. A crowd had also gathered in the area. Officers worked to de-escalate and conduct crowd control to ensure all those who had gathered at the location remained safe.
CPD did not make any arrests and left the scene once the area was cleared.”
Flagg decried the actions of the federal agents, adding that the Laugh Factory does not welcome ICE agents.
“This is disheartening. I encourage more people to film, more people to try to intervene, nonviolently, because they’re using anything as a reason to then also detain you,” Flagg said. “There is no place for ICE. They are not allowed. They’re not allowed. They’re not welcome. We don’t want your business. We don’t want you here. We are as a society trying to heal, and they’re just creating a chasm that is just dividing us even more, and they’re not licensed. These seem like volunteer people who have been waiting for the opportunity to do this.”
About a mile north of the incident outside of the Laugh Factory, witnesses report federal agents deploying tear gas on a residential street. According to Unraveled Press, who went out to the scene on Lakewood Avenue between Roscoe and Henderson streets in Lakeview, federal agents reportedly targeted laborers in the area all morning.
Neighbors gathered outside of a house where agents detained one man. The remains of the man’s lunch were still on the ground just after 12:30 p.m.
As of 12:30 p.m., agents were no longer in the area.
Grace Hauch, a resident of Lakeview, said she was moving her car when she heard whistles in the area and drove to the scene “a couple of streets” over to see an ICE vehicle. She said agents jumped a fence to detain a laborer, who they handcuffed and brought “to the ground.”
“They were going to throw him over the fence just to get him out of here,” Hauch said. “But one of the people who lives here opened the gate for them so that they wouldn’t throw him onto the concrete, and then they pulled him and they were trying to get him in the car.”
Hauch said after the agents pulled off, neighbors came out and began blocking the area with their cars.
“A bunch of cars were blocking the area, but they got to the next street down when a second ICE vehicle pulled up. That’s when everybody, all the neighbors, started surrounding the cars, and they deployed three cans of tear gas onto everybody,” Hauch detailed.
Hauch described the scene as “very violent,” stating that the man was complying with the agents but that they “were just throwing him all over the place.”
Bystanders questioned the agents about having warrants while shouting and making demands to the agents to show their faces.
Another resident, Andrew Dieho, told Unraveled Press he heard a lot of noise and thought it was a dumpster being dropped on the ground. While throwing a box into the trash, Dieho saw three or four SUVs parked on the one-way street.
“And then I see everyone gathering, like, whistles blowing,” Dieho said. “And then I see, like, people in green coming out of cars.”
Dieho said people began heckling the masked federal agents, who refused to answer questions about warrants. He said he tried to have a conversation with one of the agents, but the agent said, “You’re charging at me. Don’t do that again.”
“My feet are planted. I’m just standing in front of the guy,” Dieho said. “And then a second guy comes over and he says the same thing.”
When Dieho tried to talk to the second agent and asked for his identification, the agent pointed to his vest with no ID number or badge. “It’s just their f—cking skulls, like, ‘we’re badass, look at our patches,’ type of thing,” Dieho recalled, “Oh, and their blood type, as if, like, oh you’re in the war zone of Lakeview.”
Dieho said an agent tried to tackle him. “He couldn’t do that. These guys are obviously not well trained in anything other than, like, throwing tear gas,” Dieho said. “He tries to throw a punch at me too. That doesn’t connect. I back up.”
Video from witness here from the moment CBP gassed neighbors who had gathered outside after the kidnapping. Agent rolls a canister at the crowd out of the window of their car as they reverse away from people with whistles and bikes.
— unraveled (@unraveledpress.com) October 24, 2025 at 12:55 PM
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Dieho said the agents soon placed a detained man into their vehicle and nearly drove into each other’s vehicles as one SUV headed south and the other headed north.
“And then, as they’re, like, inching away, that’s when they just drop tear gas,” Dieho said, “when there wasn’t that many people following them to begin with.”
He said there were about 40 people outside witnessing the ordeal.
“For the record, too, there’s a lot of kids that live in this area,” Dieho said. “There were kids present, and there’s a school on School Street, two blocks east, Hawthorne Academy, where the wind was blowing [and] also bringing the tear gas that way. So it’s just unbelievable.”
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis granted a temporary restraining order against the federal government, ordering federal immigration agents in Chicagoland to, among other things, wear identification and curtail their use of chemical weapons on journalists, protestors and religious practitioners. Despite the order’s language barring agents from using tear gas and other “riot control weapons” on press and protestors “who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others,” agents have deployed tear gas in neighborhoods across Chicago since Ellis handed it down.
Unraveled Press contributed to this story.
