A WGN-TV video editor and producer was roughly detained by two Border Patrol agents on Friday morning during a highly visible rush hour enforcement action in Lincoln Square.
Debbie Brockman, who has worked as a producer for WGN since 2011, according to her LinkedIn profile, was taken to the ground face down on Foster Avenue and handcuffed while stopped cars honked and onlookers shouted epithets such as “fascists” at the two federal agents detaining her.
The woman identified herself as working at WGN and asked an onlooker taking a video to “let them know” before she was hauled off by the agents in an unmarked silver van with New Jersey plates.
“WGN is aware of this situation, and we are actively gathering the facts related to it,” the station said in a statement.
The incident occurred at about 8:30 a.m. near the intersection of Foster and Lincoln avenues, according to Josh Thomas, a neighbor who videotaped the detention of Brockman and an unidentified Latino male, who was already in the van when he came down from his apartment.
Nearly two dozen pedestrians gathered and shouted objections at the agents while cars stopped and honked as the scene unfolded, Thomas said.
“I walk out the front door of the condo, she’s laying on the ground in the street and they’re wrestling with her, trying to get her hands behind her back,” said Thomas, 36, who works at a law firm in Chicago. “They said they were detaining her for obstruction. She said, ‘I didn’t obstruct.’”
The man who was already detained in the van did not identify himself, Thomas said.
Once Brockman was handcuffed and placed in the van, the agents pulled out, clipping the rear bumper off of a stopped car partially blocking their path and speeding away past an approaching elongated CTA bus and through the busy intersection.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
