VIDEO: ICE agents shoot Chicago pastor in head with pepper ball outside Broadview facility

BROADVIEW, Ill. — A Chicago pastor is suing the Trump administration after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were captured on video firing pepper-spray projectiles at his head during a protest last month.

The incident happened on Sept. 19 outside an ICE detention center in Broadview.

Video captured by Kelly Hayes shows Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago with his arms outstrectched and looking up at a group of masked ICE agents standing on the roof of the building.

One of the agents begins firing pepper balls down at the crowd of protestors, striking Black on the top of the head and causing him to fall to the ground.

“I had only been present at the Broadview protest for a few minutes that night when I saw Reverend David Black, a regular protester outside the Broadview ICE facility, being shot in the head with a pepper ball by ICE agents,” Hayes told Storyful.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin on Wednesday defended the ICE officer who shot at the pastor.

“What this clipped video doesn’t show is that these agitators were blocking an ICE vehicle from leaving the federal facility — impeding operations,” McLaughlin wrote in a lengthy statement on social platform X.

“Over and over again, law enforcement ordered these agitators to move off of federal property so the vehicle could move. Law enforcement verbally warned these agitators that they would use force if they did not move and stop impeding operations. They did not comply,” she added. 

According to an Oct. 6 statement from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Black was among several plaintiffs “petitioning a federal court for an emergency order to stop the government’s illegal and brutal suppression of First Amendment rights.”