Eviction By ICE?
Federal immigration agents appear to have targeted Chicago tenants in “deliberate and systematic ways.” They’re still searching for answers about their landlord’s role in the raid.
Rebecca Burns
Rodrick Johnson, 67, had just returned home from a trip to the hospital and was trying to get some rest. But in the early hours of September 30, bright lights suddenly flooded his apartment. A fleet of Black Hawk helicopters descended on his five-story building — a 130-unit apartment complex at 7500 South Shore Drive — shortly before armed, masked men stormed past the doors of the ground floor.
“The next thing I knew, they were kicking my door in,” Johnson says. He and dozens of his neighbors were marched outside at gunpoint during the multiagency raid carried out by some 300 federal agents in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Black and Latino residents were zip-tied, separated by race and detained inside cargo vans, as South Side Weekly reported in the raid’s aftermath. Agents arrested 37 people who were nationals of Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Nigeria, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement. U.S. citizens like Johnson were also held for hours, without explanation. Johnson was released, exhausted and traumatized, around 4 a.m. that morning, and returned to a ransacked apartment.
The shocking, military-style siege made national headlines. DHS edited footage taken from that night into a viral social media video touting its operations; meanwhile, a constitutional law professor, Paul Gowder, told the Chicago Tribune that the raid was possibly “one of the most unconstitutional things the federal government has ever done.” Nearly a month later, residents, neighbors and advocates are still searching for answers about why the building was targeted — and what it portends, as federal immigration agents expand their violent and increasingly indiscriminate crackdown in Chicago and other U.S. cities.
Locating those taken away that night has proved nearly impossible, since the raid happened under the cover of darkness, with no family members left behind to provide information on the missing — a chilling precedent, immigration advocates say.
“Why would you conduct this raid in the middle of the night, if not to disappear people?” asks Brandon Lee, a spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
The secrecy surrounding federal agencies’ actions stands in stark contrast to an eerie reality Johnson and the building’s other remaining tenants continue to grapple with: The agents involved appear to have received advance information about the building’s occupants that led them to target certain apartments that night, and leave others untouched.
In the aftermath of the raid, Johnson told In These Times, he noticed that his door bore a strange marking: the letters “PC” spelled out in white duct tape, which he believes could be a reference to “probable cause.” But agents never presented him with a warrant that night, despite his repeatedly asking why he was being detained, he says.
The morning after the raid, another tenant filmed a video documenting this pattern on his floor. The video, obtained by In These Times and redacted to protect residents’ privacy, shows five units on that floor all tagged in a similar manner — with tape above the door reading “PC.” All five of the marked units were broken into by agents, according to the video and interviews with residents. Jonah Karsh, an organizer with the Metropolitan Tenants Organization who is working with residents in the building, says he knows of at least eight other units that fit the same pattern — marked units had been raided, while unmarked units were not. While it’s unclear exactly when the markings went up — just before, during or immediately after the raid — there’s no indication that they had been applied earlier for some alternate purpose, according to Karsh.
The morning after the raid, one tenant at 7500 South Shore Drive filmed a video documenting an eerie pattern on his floor—apartments broken into by agents the night before had markings on the door, while unmarked apartments and their occupants were left alone. (Video provided to In These Times)
Meanwhile, according to WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, reporters recovered a map of the building left behind after the raid, with units labeled as either “vacant,” “tenant” or as “firearms.” The units labeled “vacant,” which were color-coded in green, had clearly been broken into by agents.
To Karsh, that suggests “that the manner in which units were targeted was deliberate and systematic.”
“It seems like [agents] knew which units they wanted to go to … and I don’t know how they could have known that without someone telling them.
Who might have told them, and why? The raid coincided with an ongoing struggle by the building’s landlord and management to evict unauthorized occupants and rent-delinquent tenants from the distressed property, which was hemorrhaging cash, according to court records and loan servicing data. Prior to the raid, an unnamed federal official told the Associated Press, the landlord tipped off federal authorities that dozens of Venezuelan migrants were living in the building, claiming they were squatters and had threatened other tenants.
Because the identities of those arrested remain unknown, In These Times could not verify those claims. DHS initially claimed that agents targeted the building because it was frequented by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But in a statement to In These Times this week, a spokesperson for the agency said that just eight of the 37 people arrested had a criminal record of any kind, with retail theft among those alleged crimes. Just two of the 37 were confirmed gang members, according to DHS.
Raymond Corona, a tenant whose apartment was not marked or raided, had gotten to know some of the migrant families who lived in the building, many of whom moved there in 2023 as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bussed tens of thousands of Venezuelan asylum-seekers into the city. But as already-poor building conditions worsened over the last year, Corona says, the apartments also became home to squatters, including young men seemingly involved in gang activity. When the building’s current management company took over in 2024, they got rid of security guards and the front door was quickly broken into, Corona told In These Times. The management company never fixed it, he says, leaving the building wide open to anyone who wanted to enter.
Still, residents and neighbors who spoke to In These Times recounted how the raid swept up children, parents and seniors — and left them feeling less safe, not more.
One building resident described to In These Times how he sheltered two of his Venezuelan neighbors, a mother and young daughter, who showed up at his door as the raid began. The man shut off all the lights in his apartment, and the mother tried to quiet her sobbing child as the agents’ heavy footsteps grew closer.
“I didn’t know that they weren’t gonna come knock on my door,” said the man, whose name In These Times is withholding to protect him from retaliation by federal authorities. Ultimately, agents left his unit alone. The mother and daughter moved out of the building a few days later, the man said, but the girl’s father was arrested in the raid.
Eboni Watson, who lives across the street from 7500 South Shore Drive, spent more than three hours observing and filming the night of the raid after she was drawn outside by the sound of flash-bang grenades. She says she observed children being dragged, naked, from the building and asked agents, “‘How would you feel if somebody dragged you out of your house? How would you feel if somebody did this to you, separated you from your mom?’”
One agent replied that his children were citizens, according to Watson. She repeatedly asked if they had warrants; one agent told her they had five warrants, she says, even as they detained dozens of people — far more than their paperwork seemed to cover.
DHS did not respond to questions from In These Times about the warrants obtained for the operation. An agency spokesperson said that individuals encountered during the operation were “securely held,” a practice that “protects all involved.”
Earlier this month, ranking Democrats on two congressional oversight committees wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pamela Bondi demanding details on the South Shore operation, including the warrants obtained. “Trump and Noem have emboldened DHS agents to become an unaccountable terror force,” said Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who joined the letter.
Corona questions, in particular, whether the show of force targeting migrants and citizens alike was primarily about residents’ safety, as opposed to the landlord’s bottom line.
“It costs a lot more money to evict someone than it does to call ICE on them,” he says, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which launched a sweeping enforcement operation in Chicago last month. Customs and Border Protection led the South Shore raid, with agents the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also participating.
The building’s management had already filed more than 20 eviction lawsuits against occupants this year, according to court records, with some cases still pending. Last year, the owner — a limited liability company linked to Trinity Flood, a Wisconsin-based millionaire whose family owns and operates mobile homes — began attempting to sell the property, as revenue fell below the cost of property expenses and mortgage payments. Flood is currently battling simultaneous lawsuits from the City of Chicago and lender Wells Fargo, both alleging that she has failed to maintain the building in a safe and livable condition.
Karsh says he is concerned that either Flood or the property management company she hired, Strength in Management, fed authorities information that led to the raid and left residents traumatized.
“If that’s not the case, they should go out and say it on the record,” Karsh says.
Neither Flood nor Strength in Management responded to repeated requests for comment.
The brick courtyard building at 7500 South Shore Drive sits just a block away from the glittering shoreline of Lake Michigan and a 15-minute drive from the new Obama Presidential Center, set to open next year. Residents of South Shore and other nearby neighborhoods have spent years organizing for protections against the gentrification and displacement they fear the center will fuel; last month, the Chicago City Council passed a long-delayed ordinance aimed at protecting and expanding affordable housing in the area.
South Shore is a predominantly Black neighborhood; before it became home to large numbers of Venezuelan asylum-seekers in 2023, it also saw an influx of real-estate cash. During one four-month period in 2022, investors scooped up nearly a third of for-sale homes in the neighborhood, according to an analysis by the Illinois Answers Project. South Shore also has one of the highest eviction rates citywide.
The details of how the apartment building at 7500 South Shore Drive was purchased exemplify the kind of speculation residents have warned about. In 2020, Flood purchased the building and two other nearby properties through limited liability companies for more than $18 million, a price that reportedly broke previous sales records for South Shore. After the deal closed, the brokerage involved issued a press release heralding a $6 million increase from the seller’s purchase price just two years earlier. “Early investors are already enjoying the returns of the appreciating neighborhood,” the press release read.
Little information about Flood is available publicly, but loan documents provide some details. A 2020 Morningstar loan presale report for the commercial mortgage debt backed by her properties describes Flood as “a third-generation mobile home park owner and operator” who spent eight years as the CEO of a Wisconsin-based company that rents out manufactured homes and self-storage units.
As of 2020, Flood had a net worth of $18 million, according to the report. She was a small-dollar donor to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to campaign finance records.
Flood reportedly bought the South Shore properties as part of a 1031 exchange, which allows investors to avoid capital gains taxes on property sales by putting the proceeds towards further acquisitions. But by all indications, her big bet on the neighborhood otherwise failed to pay off. But she quickly came to regret the purchase, according to reporting in the business outlet The Real Deal, filing a lawsuit accusing the seller and brokers of inflating the purchase price and failing to inform her of building issues including the need for expensive, on-site security.
Flood reached a confidential settlement with the seller and brokers in 2023, but problems persisted. Strength in Management stopped employing on-site security at 7500 South Shore Drive sometime last year, tenants recall, but rent revenue from the loan portfolio was still barely covering building costs and mortgage payments. In 2024, Flood’s three Chicago buildings, along with four others she purchased with the same loan, had a shortfall of nearly half a million dollars, according to loan servicing documents.
The same year, Flood listed the three South Shore buildings for sale for roughly the same price she purchased them. No sale has occurred, but a listing for the “Jackson Park Portfolio” — a reference to the stately park abutting the Obama Center — remains posted online.
When residents of 7500 South Shore went without gas for more than a month in the summer of 2024, Karsh attempted to work with them to organize a tenants’ union, but said the effort hit a wall after Flood and property managers refused to work with them.
Meanwhile, Flood’s companies have run into legal trouble with both the city, which sued over building code violations last year, and Wells Fargo, which filed a foreclosure suit in April.
Wells Fargo alleged that Flood’s companies had failed to make loan payments and maintain the building, according to court documents. The bank asked the judge to take the building out of Flood’s hands and put it into receivership, a process through which a court-appointed third party manages the improvement and potential sale of a distressed building.
This September, after months of fighting the bank’s request, Flood’s attorney made the unusual suggestion that Strength in Management should be appointed as receiver, according to court documents. Just days before the raid, Flood’s legal team filed a motion consenting to receivership but disputing the contention that the building had been neglected, writing that Flood’s companies had spent more than $100,000 on eviction fees, while Strength in Management spent hundreds of hours “working with law enforcement in an attempt to prevent illegal squatters and criminal elements in the area from entering the building.”
Over the course of Flood’s ownership, the city has repeatedly cited the building at 7500 South Shore Drive for damaged exterior doors that do not close, a violation of municipal code. The doors remained open and unsecured when In These Times visited in October.
Strength in Management is a Chicago-based company that manages some 500 units on the city’s South and West sides. The company’s CEO, Corey Oliver, who co-chairs the political action committee of the real estate lobbying group Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance, according to campaign finance records, occasionally appears on real estate podcasts to offer his thoughts on subjects like “taking on opportunity in Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods.”
At a real estate forum in 2023, Oliver quipped that out-of-state investors were over-paying for buildings on the South and West sides, and that there would be opportunities to purchase the buildings “as some of these people who have come in speculating are going to start losing their properties over the next 18 months.”
Sometime the following year, his company began managing Flood’s properties. At an October 17 court hearing in the foreclosure suit, city inspectors described ongoing hazards in the building from two recent inspections, including a broken elevator, electrical fire hazards, flooding and the smell of human feces.
Flood did not attend the court hearing, which In These Times observed. Oliver attended and told a Cook County Circuit Court judge that the inspectors made “gross characterizations” of the building’s conditions during the most recent inspection and that the company was working to obtain the permits to make necessary improvements. The judge ruled that Strength in Management could remain the property manager for now, but ordered the company to complete a list of repairs in time for another inspection scheduled for November.
Before the hearing concluded, Oliver asked the judge what to do “if there was any issue” with the owner’s ability to pay for the ordered repairs.
“There shouldn’t be an issue with her ability to do this,” the judge replied, “if she wants to keep this property out of the appointment of a receiver.”
Chicago Alderperson Greg Mitchell, who represents the ward where the raid occurred, also attended the hearing after weeks of public silence on the matter.
Mitchell, who told the judge that his office had worked with the ATF and local police to address problems at the property, expressed doubt that “the ills that plagued that building can actually be addressed in a manner that will keep those residents safe,” calling for all occupants of the building to be relocated. Mitchell did not respond to questions from In These Times about whether his office coordinated with federal agencies or received advance notice of the raid.
At the next hearing in the case, set for November 7, remaining tenants will have the chance to voice whether they want to stay in the building or be relocated. Just 35 known occupants are left in the 130-unit building, according to Oliver.
In the days following the raid, maintenance workers at 7500 South Shore began disposing of garbage, broken doorways and belongings left behind by residents who were detained or who had fled. When In These Times visited the premises, a man who identified himself as a Strength in Management employee, but declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the company had been seeking to evict unauthorized occupants so that it could fix up the building — but complained about the amount of time it takes to evict through the courts.
The weekend before the raid, Corona, the tenant whose apartment was not raided, says he saw a maintenance employee taking photographs of the doors that were ultimately broken down — fueling his suspicion that the company somehow tipped off federal authorities. Another tenant who was already in the process of moving out had his unit raided. According to Corona, who spoke with him, when this tenant called Strength in Management the next morning, he was told that the company had believed his apartment was vacant — even though he still had keys.
At least some of the units raided that night were occupied by longtime residents — including senior citizens — who, for one reason or another, had not been paying rent or did not have current leases. In These Times is withholding their names to protect them from retaliation as the court case proceeds.
One senior citizen tenant fell disastrously behind on rent after they fell victim to a scam. The building’s property management has changed at least three times since Flood purchased it, and during a period when the property was left unsecured, this tenant says, a man began coming to their door claiming to be the current property manager. Because the elevators were frequently out, the tenant struggled to leave the apartment and began handing rent money directly to the man each month. The tenant only realized what was happening, they say, when a new property manager informed them they owed $7,000 in back rent. The tenant was never able to catch up, and without anywhere else to go, moved in with a friend in the building. That friend moved out before the night of the raid, perhaps leading management to believe the unit was vacant.
Illinois law requires landlords to take tenants to court in order to evict them; harassing or threatening tenants in order to get them to move out is illegal. A new Illinois law that takes effect next year will make it easier for local police to bypass the civil eviction process in order to remove squatters, but that does not include tenants who owe back rent or have expired leases.
Chicago tenants need stronger protections, says the Metropolitan Tenants Organization’s Karsh, but the existing ones provide a critical baseline — because if landlords can just call the feds to get rid of who they want, then that’s a really bleak reality for tenants and their security going forward.”
Jake Marshall, staff attorney for the Chicago legal nonprofit Beyond Legal Aid, also notes that a 2019 state law specifically prohibits landlords from weaponizing immigration enforcement against their tenants — including to coerce them into vacating their units. Beyond Legal Aid is not working with the occupants of 7500 South Shore Drive and could not comment on their specific cases. But Marshall said that tenants should be fairly compensated for the harm they suffered if violations of these laws took place.
“No matter their immigration status, every tenant in Illinois is entitled to formal, in-court eviction proceedings, even if they are living in their unit on an expired or verbal lease agreement,” Marshall says.
Corona, for his part, is still shaken by the memory of agents with military gear storming his apartment — particularly in light of Donald Trump’s threatening suggestion that Chicago, already under siege by immigration agents, could also be used as a military training ground. The sight of smoke in the hallways and Black Hawk helicopters on the roof were ominous, he says, and left him with a chilling sense: that what had happened to his home “was a training exercise.”
Sarah Lazare contributed reporting for this piece. Jacob Udell contributed research.
Rebecca Burns is In These Times’ housing editor and an award-winning investigative reporter. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, the Chicago Reader, the Intercept, ProPublica Illinois and other outlets.
