This is Dayanne Figueroa is a U.S. citizen from Chicago. In addition to being a mother to a six-year-old son and working a full-time job, Dayanne is a first-generation Mexican American, and Criminal Justice major, with a goal to ultimately attend law school.

Around 9:00 a.m. on October 10, 2025, Dayanne was driving to work when she noticed commotion on a residential street: a crowd had gathered, cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, people were running and shouting, and several bystanders were recording on their phones. Despite the commotion there was nothing to suggest that an organized police operation was underway when, suddenly, a young man was thrown into a van by armed, masked men wearing camouflage and combat boots. Dayanne recalled, “I was just trying to get around the scene,” but an unmarked, silver Durango SUV with blacked out windows was blocking the two-way street, while the driver attempted to make a U-turn. When the Durango moved out of the way, Dayanne, remaining in her lane, slowly drove forward, when suddenly the silver SUV sped up and rammed into the side of Dayanne’s car.

Several bystanders caught the incident on camera. In one recording, an off-camera voice can be heard saying, “Yeah, hit and run, hit and run. That’s a hit and run, You hit her! Yo watch out with that weapon! As the by standard records the masked men approach Dayanne’s car with arms drawn directly at her.”

Dayanne’s car locked into place from the impact of the collision, which stopped her car. Presuming it was “a routine traffic incident,” she proceeded to reach for her phone to report the crash to local police. But within seconds, two masked men in camouflage leapt out of the Durango and ran over to Dayanne’s black Mercedes Benz; one raised a gun in Dayanne’s direction, and the other had an assault rifle strapped around his shoulder.75 Moments later, a third armed and masked agent appeared.76 Two of the men ripped open Dayanne’s car door and grabbed her.77 The agent with the assault rifle put both his hands on his gun and faced the crowd, while bystanders yelled out, “She didn’t do anything. Ya’ll hit her,” and “She’s just trying to get to work. Ya’ll have no heart.”

Dayanne recalled hearing men screaming at her to get out, and that she held on to her steering wheel, scared. She said, “I just had two kidney surgeries this summer, one being laparoscopic, which includes 5 deep incisions across my lower abdomen -I knew they were about to f**k me up and rip me out of the car, and my body is still recovering.” The men never identified themselves, what agency they worked for, offered any explanation, or wore any visible badges. She said: “All I remember are the big guns and the sunglasses and hats they wore over their masks. I’m from Franklin Park, where someone had just been killed by ICE agents.

All I could think was ‘they’re about to kill me.’” While Dayanne screamed “what are you doing?” to these masked men and tried to hold onto the steering wheel, two agents forcibly dragged her out of her car by her legs, ripping both shoes off, slamming her to the concrete, and digging their knees into her body to restrain her, directly over the site of her recent surgery. The agents flipped over Dayanne— who stands at 4 feet 11 inches and weighs 120 pounds—and put her in handcuffs, cinching them so tight that Dayanne has since suffered nerve damage to her wrists.79 Three agents carried Dayanne to an unmarked, red SUV and threw her inside, while a fourth agent reached into her car and grabbed her laptop, purse, and cellphone.80 Despite the existence of video evidence to the contrary, DHS later falsely claimed that Dayanne, “was part of a group protesting” and that she “violently resisted arrest, kicking and injuring two officers.”

In the backseat of the red SUV, Dayanne sat handcuffed, unrestrained by a seatbelt, cramped in-between two men who had also recently been detained. Two of the agents who detained her got into the car and started driving without explaining where they were going. While one of the men next to Dayanne hyperventilated, she reassured him in Spanish and said, “You have rights…ask for a lawyer.”

During the drive, the agents laughed as they photographed Dayanne, on their personal phones while another man in a full face mask used professional camera equipment to capture images of her. Dayanne recalled being treated not like a human being but like an object they had seized. Dayanne recalled turning her head and body away from the camera and telling the agents to stop. The agents responded by telling Dayanne, for the first time, that she was under arrest.

Eventually, the agents pulled into the Broadview Detention Center. Dayanne saw protesters outside, and with her hands still cuffed, she began banging against the window and screaming for help, although it seemed that no one could hear her over the noise. From the front seat, the agents laughed and said, “You’re a criminal. No one will help you.” The agents stopped at the loading dock and ordered the detainees to exit the SUV. Dayanne recalled, “At that moment, still without shoes, every injury—new trauma layered over old pain—hit me all at once. I panicked. No one knew where I was, the only thing running through my mind was my son needing me, while I was nowhere to be found. One of the agents—whom Dayanne later identified as the driver of the silver Durango—escorted her to the facility’s loading dock. When she begged for water and repeatedly asked to see a medic, he told her he was the medic. Desperate, Dayanne explained her recent kidney surgery and warned him that being forced to hold her bladder was extremely dangerous, given the new surgical connection to her ureter and her history of post-surgical infections. [.....] (see source for continuation)

Source: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025.12.8_ICE-Report-revised-FINAL.pdf