Elgin police said they have no evidence that people threw “rocks and bottles” at ICE agents during an hours-long effort to take a man into custody last weekend or that Elgin police officers “refused to help protect law enforcement.”

The police department is conducting its own investigation into the allegations made Monday by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about what they experienced as they conducted a federal immigration enforcement operation on Dec. 6 in the 1600 block of Maple Lane, including physical attacks on agents.

It is also investigating complaints made by residents about the actions of ICE agents.

In a statement about the preliminary findings posted on Facebook early Thursday morning, the police department said body camera footage from all of its officers at the scene has been reviewed and there was one incident documented in which a water bottle was thrown at an ICE vehicle.

“The water container strikes the rear window of the federal agent’s vehicle and bounces as the vehicle is driving away,” the statement said.

A review of online social media posts and video also showed a bystander who “picks up what appears to be a snowball from the ground and then throws it at a federal agent’s vehicle,” officials said.

Body camera footage also shows “some federal agents, while walking to their vehicles, were simultaneously deploying what appears to be crowd control munitions,” the statement said.

The police department received more than 50 calls related to the incident in which Luis Jesus Acosta Gutierrez, whom ICE officials say is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, after he allegedly rammed an ICE agent’s vehicle into a tree in the 1600 block of West Highland Avenue, escaped from an ICE vehicle and later held agents at bay during a standoff at the Maple Avenue apartment.

Eight police reports have been made and are being investigated in reference to incidents related to the crash and standoff, including people being struck by pepper balls and exposed to “other chemical irritants” and from ICE agents, including one from the crash.

“Elgin police officers assisted Elgin firefighters in providing medical treatment for that exposure, and seven persons were treated and released on scene,” the statement said. “The Elgin police department filed six police reports for persons stating they were either struck or had been exposed to chemical irritants.”

The police department issued the statement because “our main priority is transparency with the community,” Elgin Police Department spokesman Sgt. Hector Gutierrez said. “If they are making that allegation, we need to be transparent and say this is what happened.”

One of the complaints came from a “federal agent supervisor who was not at the incident site (and) called the Elgin Police Department alleging bricks were being thrown at federal agents and that tires were being slashed,” the police statement said. “An Elgin police supervisor on the scene at the time of that call did not observe any such activity.”

A review of the footage did show that an ICE agent grabbing a man from the crowd and throwing him to the ground after the man made a move against the agents, Guttierez said.

While the police cannot assist or interfere with any federal agent conducting federal immigration enforcement under the Illinois TRUST Act unless they have a federal warrant, officer will intervene if they “see an agent is acting maliciously,” he said.

“We encourage people 100% to call us. We want people not to be afraid to call us,” Gutierrez said.

The police investigation is ongoing, he said. “We still have to review a bunch of videos from officers’ cameras and videos we got from the public,” he said.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/11/elgin-police-ice-standoff-investigation-bottles/