The Village of Broadview said they’ve launched a criminal investigation after a CBS News Chicago reporter had a projectile fired at her vehicle by an ICE agent late Sunday morning.
Reporter Asal Rezaei said there was no active protest or protesters at the facility, and she was alone with no one around her at the time of the incident.
In a report filed with Broadview police, Rezaei said she was driving her truck with her driver’s side window down, while approaching the 25th Avenue entrance to see if any activity was taking place, before leaving the area.
That’s when she said a masked ICE agent, who saw her window down, shot a pepper ball about 50 feet from the inside of the fence, hitting her truck’s driver’s side panel, causing the chemical agents to engulf the inside of her truck.
CBS News Chicago 
CBS News Chicago 
Rezaei said the pepper ball left white powder on her windshield, and her face had “been on fire for at least the last 10 minutes or so.” The chemical also caused her to vomit once outside of her truck, she said.
In her report, she said, “At this moment it’s not really clear why that officer took a shot at me. My car has been here several times, although I did not identify myself verbally as a member of the press. There were no protests going on,” said Rezaei. “There was actually nobody there except one other person that was a member of a fire department that was there checking in on the buildings around this area.”
Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills responded to the incident in a statement, saying, “The Village of Broadview Police Department has launched a criminal investigation into an allegedly unprovoked attack on a CBS Chicago TV news reporter’s vehicle by a chemical munition fired from the direction of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement detention facility. The victim declined medical attention. The Broadview Police Department expects the full cooperation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into our criminal investigation.”
CBS News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security but has yet to hear back.
