CHICAGO — A Presbyterian minister was struck in the head by a pepper ball outside the Broadview immigration detention facility this week, according to witnesses and local clergy. The incident occurred as demonstrators gathered to protest recent federal immigration raids across the Chicago area.
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Rev. David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago said he was wearing his clerical collar and standing with other faith leaders when an agent fired a pepper ball that hit him in the temple. “We could hear them laughing,” Black told Religion News Service.
Video circulated online shows agents positioned on a rooftop as protesters chant from below.
Faith leaders across Illinois condemned the response as excessive. The Illinois Council of Churches called the incident “a shocking act of violence against a member of the clergy exercising his right to peaceful protest,” and urged an independent investigation.
The confrontation outside Broadview came amid heightened tensions over the Trump administration’s deployment of federal immigration agents and National Guard troops in several U.S. cities, including Chicago. Civil-rights groups and state officials say those deployments have blurred the line between immigration enforcement and military action, escalating fear and mistrust in immigrant communities.
