A dad was out grocery shopping with his family in a Chicago suburb when agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, sprayed him and his 1-year-old daughter with pepper spray. Rafael Veraza and his family were simply trying to buy groceries at Sam’s Club in Cicero, but when they heard sirens and whistles, they decided to leave, the Associated Press reported. Before they could exit the parking lot, a masked agent approached their vehicle and shot pepper spray through the car window, affecting both Rafael and his 1-year-old child.
After the horrifying incident, his 1-year-old daughter “was struggling to breathe” and “trying to open her eyes.” Luckily, his daughter didn’t need to be hospitalized, The Hill reported, but the experience obviously affected her. Video footage shared on social media shows the toddler, whose face is censored, crying afterward. Someone says, “You’re OK, Mama, you’re OK,” per the Chicago Sun Times.
According to the newspaper, the dad also said he’s seeking out specialist care for his daughter after the terrifying experience. At a media conference, he said he didn’t know how the pepper spray would affect his baby. He did what he could in the moment to try to help her. “I had waters, water down my face and basically water down her face because I didn’t know the effects of the pepper spray towards her,” Veraza explained.
Even though his daughter didn’t need to be hospitalized, the dad had to seek out medical treatment because he has asthma. “When I got to the hospital, my heartbeats was at 263 per minute,” he said, per CBS News.
Veraza also explained that his family was not doing anything wrong. “I didn’t have to go through this, and my daughter didn’t have to go through this,” he said, according to CBS News. “We aren’t protesters, we weren’t going after them, we weren’t attacking them.”
Plus, the fact that the pepper spray also affected his daughter made it even more devastating. “Us, as adults, we can handle it, but as kids? Shouldn’t be targeting kids,” he said.
According to AP, the US Department of Homeland Security denied the whole thing. In a statement shared with the news outlet, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed “there was no crowd control or pepper spray deployed in a Sam’s Club parking lot.”
