¶ Intro / Opening
What happens when you say yes for an entire year? Join WBEZ on October 26th for an evening with titan of television Shonda Rhimes as she recounts lessons from her best-selling memoir, Year of Yes. Tickets at wbez.org slash events. Good afternoon. I'm Lisa Labas, and this is The Rundown.
¶ Illinois Governor Challenges Immigration Tactics
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker thinks a federal judge may have to weigh in on aggressive federal immigration enforcement tactics deployed in a Chicago neighborhood. The governor was reacting to a dangerous high-speed chase and collision on a street. on the city's east side. That happened this week. Now, after that chase, Customs and Border Patrol agents launched smoke grenades and tear gas at protesters and Chicago police.
A federal judge just last week issued a temporary restraining order blocking such tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists. I also believe that they may have violated the TRO. that was issued against ICE, not talking about the National Guard TRO, but the one about ICE. And so I know that we're, you know, everybody's looking into that question. The lawsuit was bought by a consortium of journalists and protesters.
¶ Governors Launch Health Alliance, Tylenol Debunked
Democratic governors from 14 states, including Illinois plus Guam, have launched a new public health alliance. This group will coordinate issues across state lines and share data and information about threats, guidelines and emergency preparedness. typically roles of the federal government, but the governors in the group say President Trump's administration has not been filling those roles. The new alliance has the help of a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director.
And the Trump administration has pledged to address America's skyrocketing rates of autism, starting with warning pregnant people to avoid Tylenol. Medical professionals, though, say it's not likely that Tylenol causes autism. JJ Hanley joined our In the Loop program to talk about the impact this messaging has on expectant mothers. She produced a film entitled Refrigerator Mothers. It highlighted the guilt that moms often face. Parents are already afraid.
Parents are already in young parents, especially are distrustful of a lot of things related to treatment of their children in a medical office. And so it just adds to. fear unnecessarily. Studies show it is not quite clear what causes autism, nor is there a cure. Rush Hospital's Dr. Letha Soria also shared it is okay for pregnant people to take Tylenol for pain. You're listening to The Rundown.
¶ Resident's Harrowing Account of Immigration Raid
Last month, during a military-style immigration raid on an apartment building in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, a man heard a knock at his door. It was not federal agents, but a mother and her young daughter pleading for a place to hide. with residents along with remnants of the federal raid found throughout the building reveal clues about how it was planned and carried out. My colleague Mariah Wolfel has more.
That man who got the knock on his door, he doesn't want his voice played on the radio. He fears he'll be targeted by the federal government for his actions that night. So I'm going to tell you his full story as he told it to me and my colleague Sophie Sherry. The raid started on September 30th, around 1 in the morning. Federal agents descended on the building, some rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters on the roof.
He said he didn't know what was going on. He was hearing loud pops in the hallway. Smoke bombs filled the air. People were screaming and freaking out, he said. While the feds busted down the doors of some apartments, his unit was left unbothered.
But all of a sudden, amid the chaos, he heard the knock. On the other side, he saw his friend, a Venezuelan woman he had gotten to know after meeting in the laundry room. She lived with her seven-year-old daughter and her husband, who had already been detained. that night the mother and daughter ran into his apartment to hide from federal agents the girl was inconsolable and couldn't stop screaming she hid under his bed as her mother tried to keep her quiet
He holds back tears as he recounts that night and eventually says he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. But he tells us that the Friday before the raid, he saw someone who he thought to be a building employee taking pictures of the units, quote, where the Venezuelans. lived. Inside the building there are signs of how the raid was organized. It looks like the units that were raided are marked in a makeshift sticker system. Okay so we're seeing stickers with
X's. X's? The stickers are made of duct tape and marker. The ones on the raided apartments have the letters PC and a circle or an X around it. One man told us that after a back and forth with the feds that night, they determined he was a resident and put an orange sticker on his door that read, no go. Orange stickers also appear on other units that listed the occupants, like two adults. two kids one adult now and then oh
Sophie, my colleague, picks up a crumpled piece of paper from the ground in a doorway of an apartment that appears to have been raided. It's a map of all the units on all five... floors of the building, labeling each one as either tenant, vacant or firearms. From what we can tell, the units listed as vacant have clearly been raided. Those units are where non-paying migrants or squatters may have been living, according to residents.
Most units marked as tenant appeared intact, though not all of them. Some units marked as firearms were also raided. It's unclear who made this map or how it was used. And it perhaps poses more questions than explanations of how the raid was conducted. Reporters are still digging into those questions and looking out to see if this pattern repeats itself in future raids.
As for the mother and daughter, the neighbor who shielded them confirmed that their unit was marked vacant on the map. They ended up staying in his unit for three days after the raid. He doesn't know where they are, and he can't contact them. The mother doesn't have a phone or anything else to her name, he said. But she has his phone number. He says hopefully she's safe. Mariah Wolfel, WBEZ News.
Looking at weather, cloudy today, a high near 60, and then partly cloudy with a low in the mid-50s tonight, and Thursday, sunshine, high near 70. You can find the latest news whenever you want at WBEZ.org or on your radio at 91.5 FM. I'm Lisa Labez. Thanks for listening.