A former journalist and current Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois was violently thrown to the ground by a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a protest Friday morning.
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old who announced her candidacy for Illinois’ 9th District in March, joined other demonstrators outside an ICE processing facility in Broadview when federal officers responded with violence.
Video captured the moment at around 6:30 a.m. when an unidentified officer grabbed Abughazaleh across the chest, pushed her forward, picked her up and slammed her into the pavement.
Abughazaleh told HuffPost that later in the morning, she and other protesters attempted to block a van after agents arrested a protester in what Abughazaleh described as a “kidnapping.”
“This has never happened at one of these protests, where they kidnapped a protester,” Abughazaleh said. “And we saw through the gate that they were in chains being put in a van. And so everyone that was there joined arm-in-arm to block the van and tried to rescue the person who was exercising their First Amendment rights.”
