Photojournalist targeted with pepper balls at Illinois ICE protest

Independent photojournalist Chana Shapiro was hit multiple times with pepper balls fired by federal officers while covering a protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, Illinois, on Sept. 19, 2025.

The incident, which appeared targeted, took place during one of a series of demonstrations outside the facility, where detainees are held and processed ahead of deportation.

Shapiro told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she arrived shortly after dawn to cover the protest. Early on, she was photographing from a driveway, seated cross-legged, when an ICE truck drove forward until its grille was inches from her face before speeding into the crowd, deploying tear gas and moving through an opaque field of smoke.

“The truck just plowed through,” Shapiro said. “It was very clear that they would have run over people if they had not gotten out of the way.”

Later that morning, she lay close to a fence, with a camera bag, DSLR camera and press badge on her, to photograph chained detainees being loaded into vans.

Within minutes, she felt pepper balls skid down her sides and clip her leg — “as if drawing a chalk outline.”

“I thought maybe they were shooting behind me into the crowd,” she said. “Then I heard someone scream something like, ‘You can’t shoot journalists,’ or ‘They just shot a journalist.’”

One witness told Shapiro that a sniper positioned on the roof had tracked her for several minutes before firing, even as she was alone and away from protesters.

After being treated briefly by street medics, Shapiro said she ran back toward the fence without protective accessories and only her DSLR to continue documenting the scene.

She was struck again. “I immediately felt something like marbles bursting down my shoulder and leg,” she said.

Shapiro also said tear gas and pepper spray seeped into cuts on her knees and elbows, which she had gotten from crawling to capture different shots.

“My body was really hurt and stung for the rest of the day. And then, because it kept happening, it kept exacerbating it,” she said.

Unable to clean her gear, chemical residue stayed pressed against her skin, continually aggravating the wounds over a period of days as she returned to cover the protests. It ultimately turned her arms, legs, chest and shoulders “metallically red,” and sensitive — what she described as feeling like “electromagnetic salmon.”

“I think it’s notable that being a journalist out in front is not a deterrent, the way that it’s supposed to be,” she said of the violent response from law enforcement. “It was a pretty equal opportunity.”

At least five other journalists were assaulted by law enforcement at anti-deportation protests at the Broadview facility the same day, according to Tracker data.