Damning Video Shows DHS Agents Pepper-Spray a Baby

President Donald Trump’s federal law enforcement crackdown has hit a disgusting new low, after federal agents reportedly pepper-sprayed a 1-year-old in Chicago and then lied about it.

Rafael Veraza, 25, claimed at a press conference Sunday that federal agents had deployed chemical agents on him and his family—including his young daughter—as they attempted to avoid an immigration raid at a Sam’s Club in Cicero, a Chicago suburb, the day before.

A video shared to X by Gregory Royal Pratt, an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, showed the incident and its aftermath. In one clip filmed from the inside of Veraza’s car, a large black truck sped in the opposite direction to the family. As the truck passed, the people inside appeared to spray a substance through the driver’s window of Veraza’s car, and the driver started rubbing his eyes.

Another clip showed the family out of the car, as Veraza’s wife, Evelyn, wiped her crying daughter’s face. “This is what ICE does. This is what these terrorists do to babies,” said a voice off-screen.

At the press conference Sunday, Veraza said he hadn’t noticed his daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, had been exposed to the chemicals until his wife instructed him to pull the car over. He said his daughter struggled to open her eyes and appeared to have labored breathing.

“We’re not protesters. We were not even attacking them,” Veraza said.

The Department of Homeland Security flatly denied Veraza’s account and the video evidence to the contrary. “DHS LAW ENFORCEMENT DOES NOT PEPPER SPRAY CHILDREN,” the agency wrote on X Monday afternoon.

“Here are the FACTS: during an operation rioters began throwing objects at agents and blocking the road. This did NOT occur in a Sam’s Club parking lot. Border Patrol deployed crowd control measures, and safely cleared the area,” the post read. “When rioters impede law enforcement operations they are putting officers, themselves, and others in danger.”

The statement did nothing to explain why agents would use crowd-control measures on a vehicle that was driving away from the area. The DHS has routinely provided false or misleading accounts of excessive force used by law enforcement. The agency’s statements have omitted essential details about arrests, contradicted witness testimony, and in one case, even gotten every single detail wrong.

This isn’t the first allegation that the DHS used chemical irritants on children. Just a few weeks ago, agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of children on their way to a Halloween parade.

Last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the use of force against protesters “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat,” citing a systemic use of force that “shocks the conscience.” In her ruling, the judge slammed Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino, who reportedly led the aggressive operation Saturday, for lying about his own use of force against protesters.

The injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In the video, it appears that no warnings were given as agents deployed irritants into the car and then continued driving.

The Trump administration has asked for a stay on the judge’s order while it files for appeal, so may continue its reign of terror on Chicago residents—including those in diapers.

Watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability has filed a bar complaint against Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan is currently leading the president’s retaliatory prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Halligan is also one of Trump’s former defense attorneys.

“CfA asked the Florida and Virginia Bars to investigate Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan,” the organization wrote on X on Tuesday. “By using the power of her office to prosecute Former FBI Director James Comey and New York AG Letitia James despite a dearth of evidence, Halligan may have violated myriad bar rules.”

The complaint also highlights Halligan’s Signal messages to Lawfare journalist Anna Bowers last month, arguing that they’re a clear violation of Virginia Bar rules, as well as the Federal Records Act.

“Screenshots of Ms. Halligan’s texts indicate she had ‘set disappearing message time to 8 hours.’ In other words, each message Ms. Halligan sent and each message she received would automatically disappear from her device 8 hours after she sent it. Ms. Halligan was clearly aware that her messages would autodelete. After Ms. Bower reached out to DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, Ms. Halligan texted Ms. Bower that ‘the whole convo is off the record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal.’ It therefore appears Ms. Halligan was using Signal deliberately because records would not be preserved,” the complaint reads.

“Making the proactive decision to use a message app that does not preserve records for the purpose of an official conversation regarding Ms. Halligan’s actions as Interim U.S. Attorney appears to be a flagrant violation of the FRA. Ms. Halligan’s actions in contacting a journalist through Signal, setting her messages to disappear in 8 hours and retroactively claiming the exchange was off the record in an effort to secretly influence media coverage of the James case appears a deliberate violation of the FRA and, therefore, a violation of RCP 8.4(b).”

The 17-page complaint then calls for investigations into Halligan’s Bar license in both Virginia and Florida. Read it in full here.

The Trump administration has declared that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism is illegal, which could force the agency to close in the coming months when it runs out of cash, reported Politico.

Normally, the CFPB is funded using money from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve—but Republicans, in an attempt to defund the agency, have been putting forth an argument to interpret “combined earnings” as profit. The Justice Department said in a legal memo that since the Fed has no surplus cash, it can’t transfer any money to the CFPB.

This is the latest tactic in an ongoing effort by Republicans and the Trump administration to dismantle the agency.

The CFPB was created after the 2008 recession in order to protect consumers from the kinds of predatory, risky lending practices that contributed to the crash. At a time when more and more Americans are falling into debt and struggling to keep up with their loan payments, the loss of the CFPB would remove oversight from lenders.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the mastermind behind the fight to eliminate the CFPB: In February, he requested $0 from the Fed to fund the CFPB, not arguing that the funding was illegal as the administration is now, but rather that the agency just didn’t need the funds. He’s also fighting in court for the ability to suspend 90 percent of CFPB staff.

Without funding, the agency “anticipates exhausting its currently available funds in early 2026,” it said in the court filing.

The Department of Homeland Security is patting itself on the back for Chicago’s dip in crime—even though the record low has absolutely nothing to do with the presence of federal agents.

“Celebrating with Chicagoans that since Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago started, homicides decreased 16 percent, shootings decreased 35 percent (the lowest in four years), robberies decreased 41 percent, vehicular carjackings decreased 48 percent, and transit crime decreased 20 percent,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin emailed the Chicago mayor’s office Monday afternoon.

“Thanks to DHS law enforcement, Chicago has experienced the fewest summer murders since 1965!” McLaughlin concluded.

Crime was down across the board by the end of August, according to the Chicago Police Department. But how the Trump administration is responsible for the drop in Windy City crime doesn’t make sense, considering that DHS didn’t arrive in Chicago until September 8.

“Crime is down in Chicago, but ICE/CBP has nothing to do with that work,” posted the Chicago mayor’s office on Tuesday.

If anything, the presence of federal agents in Chicago seems to have made the city less safe. State-sanctioned violence has been nearly nonstop in Chicago over the last few months.

In October, agents used tear gas in residential areas “multiple times without audible warnings,” according to court documents, surprising families with the painful chemical irritant. A couple of weeks later, federal agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of school-age children on their way to a Halloween parade, in a residential Chicago neighborhood.

Regardless, DHS’s Chicago presence is apparently here to stay.

“We aren’t leaving Chicago,” McLaughlin posted on X Tuesday.

The White House is using a report from DoorDash, a food delivery service, to claim that the price of breakfast foods has gone down for American consumers. But their cherry-picked numbers are outrageously misleading.

As President Donald Trump continues to dismiss concerns about affordability, his administration released a report citing DoorDash’s first-ever State of Local Commerce Report, which was published Monday. Among other things, the company’s report claimed that grocery prices on breakfast items have dropped 14 percent between March and September 2025.

Trump officials took that 14 percent and ran with it throughout Monday, touting the statistic as proof that the president had managed to improve the economy. But that number alone is deceptive about the overall price of breakfast foods because of what items are included and what items are missing.

DoorDash’s claim is based on the company’s “Breakfast Basics Index,” which is made up of the price of four items: three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel, and an avocado. Already, this is a poor metric for breakfast because DoorDash omits breakfast staples such as coffee, bread, bacon, or even orange juice—all of which have seen prices go up in the past year.

Drought and weather conditions in South America have led the price of coffee to increase more than 83 percent so far this year. Meanwhile, NBC News reported that the prices of bread, bacon, and orange juice all saw increases since October 2024. Only by omitting breakfast staples could the company claim a reduction in the price of the most important meal of the day and then be parroted by an administration desperate to assuage mounting concerns about affordability.

The number is also misleading due to what it includes. DoorDash’s report states that the 14 percent drop was “driven largely by the decrease in the price of eggs.” By mid-September, egg prices had crashed at least 70 percent since the highs of March that were brought about by the bird flu outbreak earlier this year. One graph provided by DoorDash, and shared to X by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, showed a sharply declining price of eggs, while the other items had only gentle slopes.

The price of DoorDash’s “Everyday Essentials Index,” which included the cost of toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper, laundry detergent, pain medicine, and diapers, “remained flat over twelve months,” according to the company. But in its own report Monday, the White House claimed those costs “fell over the past year.”

Leavitt claimed that DoorDash’s report proved Trump had “defeated Joe Biden’s inflation crisis—just like he promised.” In reality, inflation has steadily increased for the last five months in a row.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also celebrated the results, writing on X: “More savings, less stress—that’s The Trump Effect.”

DoorDash is determined to be a “good partner” of the Trump administration, according to a private company scorecard that circulated through the White House in August. Trump previously met with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu in January.

The Trump administration has heavily relied on companies to spread its false claims about lowering consumer prices. Last week, Trump touted a decrease in the price of Walmart’s 2025 Holiday Meal as proof that groceries were less expensive—but failed to point out that last year’s basket contained more items.