An immigration agent facing criminal charges in Cook County told Brookfield police officers that he tried to grab the phone of an individual who was filming him at a gas station in the western suburb, according to body camera footage released Friday.
Adam Saracco is charged with misdemeanor battery in one of the first known instances in Cook County of an immigration officer brought to court in connection with encounters with protesters. He is scheduled to make a first appearance in March.
“I don’t want anybody sticking their camera in my face. I don’t know what he’s trying to do with this,” Saracco said, according to police body camera footage. “I tried to grab his phone.”
The Brookfield Police Department released partially-redacted police reports and body camera footage to the Tribune following a Freedom of Information Act request, shedding more light on the Dec. 27 confrontation.
The complaining witness in the case is Robert Held, a local attorney who has often protested at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in nearby Broadview. Held reported that Saracco threw him to the ground at a gas station in after Held followed him from the processing facility, according to police reports and Held’s account.
“He started walking toward me and then he increased his pace and threw me to the ground,” Held previously told the Tribune. “And he was on top of me and he grabbed my phone and … I had to use all my might to hold onto my phone.”
A statement from Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the arrest “gross” and defended the actions of Saracco.
“We won’t accept this stay tuned,” the statement said.
DHS accused Held of harassing Saracco and called him a “known ICE agitator.”
“While off duty and driving home in his personal vehicle, the officer was stalked by this individual to a local gas station. The agitator confronted the officer, filmed him at close range, and recorded the officers (sic) personal license plate,” the statement said. “These were clear attempts to dox our officer. The officer, who was alone and without protective equipment, acted to protect himself when faced with this threatening behavior.”
Held, though, hit back on the accusations with his own statement, saying of the statement, “every word of that is a lie.”
“What she calls ‘malicious rhetoric,’ I call documentation. What she calls ‘agitation,’ I call accountability. What she calls a ‘threat,’ a local police department and prosecutor call battery. McLaughlin knows the difference. She’s lying,” he said.
Body camera footage captures the responding officers trying to make sense of the situation, going back and forth between Held and Saracco asking if anyone involved is a federal agent. A police report says all parties initially denied being employed by the federal government.
“Nobody’s like law enforcement or anything? Where’s the federal agent thing coming into play?” an officer asked.
“He said I’m a federal agent,” Saracco replied, referring to Held. “He’s filming me while I’m trying to pump my gas. He’s got the camera in my face.”
Later, another officer asks: “Do you work for the government or no?”
After a redacted portion of the video, Saracco replies: “He followed me from my work.”
Asked to describe what happened between him and Held, Saracco said he started “hollering” at Held, asking why he was filming him.
“I tried to grab his phone to get the images and videos off his phone,” Saracco said.
At the scene, officers interviewed Held, sought to collect video and interviewed multiple witnesses, in addition to taking a statement from Saracco.
“He got very angry that I was filming him. He ran up to me and grabbed me and threw me on the ground … and he tried to grab the phone out of me,” Held told an officer.
A witness told police she was stopped at a light and pulled around when she “saw this old man being tackled to the ground.”
“I started beeping my horn … and I said get off him!” the woman said.
Saracco has been named in lawsuits filed against the Department of Homeland Security, including in a 2017 amended complaint that accused him and other agents of battering a man at a Chicago field office. The suit was later settled.
Protesters, advocates and members of the public have called on local authorities to investigate and bring charges against immigration agents accused of battering people they encounter on the street.
In October, a left-leaning voters’ rights group wrote to Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul asking their offices to launch investigations into the conduct of immigration agents.
In a previous statement to the Tribune, Brookfield police officials said they initially sought a felony charge.
The state’s attorney’s office said in a statement last week that it “reviews the available facts and relevant law when making charging decisions.”