Brokers from the Division of Homeland Safety descended upon the Nationwide Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Tradition in Chicago on Tuesday, with not less than 15 DHS automobiles arriving within the museum’s car parking zone, according to the Chicago Solar Instances, which first reported on the information.
The automobiles have been within the car parking zone for nearly two hours, Veronica Ocasio, the museum’s director of training and programming, informed the Solar Instances. Ocasio additionally mentioned that an agent, who didn’t establish what company he was with, was granted permission to make use of the lavatory on the museum.
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Billy Ocasio, the museum’s president and CEO, told Hyperallergic that the agent appeared across the museum as an alternative of utilizing the lavatory and didn’t depart the museum when requested to take action by workers. “Folks have been frightened. They didn’t know find out how to reply and have been intimidated,” he mentioned.
“Homeland Safety offered themselves in drive, Gestapo-style intimidation to our workers, who was not prepared. We weren’t prepared. And we, as a workers, because the Nationwide Puerto Rican museum, is not going to enable this bullying and intimidation to occur right here,” Veronica Ocasio mentioned throughout a information briefing on Wednesday.
Consultant Delia Ramirez, whose district consists of Humboldt Park, the place the museum is positioned, informed the Solar Instances that DHS brokers “ought to establish themselves, like each legislation enforcement official is required to do.”
In a press release circulated to the press, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin mentioned, “FALSE. The Division of Homeland Safety DID NOT goal the Nationwide Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Tradition. On July 8, HSI Chicago’s Monetary Crimes Process Power (FCTF) staged and held a fast briefing within the Museum’s car parking zone prematurely of an enforcement motion associated to a narcotics investigation.”
Ramirez added, “All these techniques of authoritarianism are about management. It’s about suppressing dissent. It’s about making an attempt to dismantle resistance, and it’s about making an attempt to paralyze our communities. It’s about creating these loopy spectacles of violence to pit folks in opposition to one another after which justify their techniques after they get caught.”
Veronica Ocasio additionally mentioned that workers had heard the agent discussing the museum’s upcoming festivals, which incorporates the Barrio ArtsFest this weekend. The museum’s car parking zone closes at 5 p.m. on Tuesdays when the museum closes. When a museum consultant informed this to the brokers, they requested to go away their automobiles in a single day, she mentioned. The museum refused and the brokers departed shortly earlier than 5 p.m.
