One-year-old girl hospitalized after she was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents’

A one-year-old girl had to be rushed to the hospital after Border Patrol agents allegedly pepper-sprayed her family in a Chicago suburb following an ICE operation.  Rafael Veraza claimed that he and his young daughter, Ariana, were sprayed with the painful chemical near the parking lot of Sam’s Club in Cicero, Illinois, on Saturday, November 8. The Veraza family was driving out of the parking lot with the car’s windows down when Border Patrol agents allegedly pepper-sprayed inside the vehicle.  Both Ariana and her father were briefly hospitalized after the alleged confrontation.  Rafael detailed his troubling claims during a press conference on Sunday, noting that his family never made it inside the grocery store, as per Fox 32. After pulling into the parking lot, Rafael noticed a helicopter hovering above and heard whistles being blown, indicating that ICE was in the area.  Concerned about his family’s safety, he then decided to drive away.  But just as he tried to leave, Rafael says a dark-colored truck pulled up beside them and sprayed the chemical irritant inside the window ‘for no reason’.    ‘[The agent] started spraying from the front of the car towards the back. Basically, I got sprayed all over my face,’ Rafael said.  He said he could barely breathe and the spray’s burning effects were amplified by his asthma. But the true horror he experienced was watching his innocent baby in agony. ‘My daughter was trying to open her eyes. She was struggling to breathe,’ he recalled.  ‘I was not a protester. I didn’t have nothing against them.’  The horrified family said they are considering taking legal action to cover the care Ariana now needs, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted a statement to social media Sunday denying Rafael’s accusations.  ‘No. There was no crowd control or pepper spray deployed in a Sam’s Club parking lot,’ she wrote.    ‘Though, over the weekend in Chicago, law enforcement was shot at, bricks thrown at them [and] they were rammed with vehicles and other attacks.’  According to a DHS press release, Border Patrol was attacked while conducting immigration enforcement operations in Little Village, which is the town neighboring Cicero.  Border Patrol was accosted by a hostile crowd that boxed them into a street and alleyway,’ the statement reads.  The post One-year-old girl hospitalized after she was pepper-sprayed byICEagents’ appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.