Scott Sakiyama supported a neighboring Black family while federal prosecutors accused their son of assaulting a Border Patrol agent. Ten days later, federal agents arrested Sakiyama himself.

Attorney Scott Sakiyama stood in front of reporters in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Oct. 10. Paul Ivery, a 26-year-old intellectually disabled Black man and Oak Park local, was leaving the courthouse after enduring nearly two weeks of criminal proceedings. The government claimed Ivery assaulted a Border Patrol agent at a protest at the suburban Broadview ICE facility on Sept. 27, only to drop the case two weeks later. Sakiyama, a fellow Oak Park resident, didn’t represent Ivery in court but offered to act as a spokesperson for his family.

“If the case had gone forward, it probably would have lasted for months, and so it’s just such a relief to have it over now,” Sakiyama told reporters on Oct.10.

Ten days later, Sakiyama ended up in the back of a vehicle used by federal immigration agents himself. The masked agents detained him at gunpoint on the morning of Oct. 20 and brought him to the same Broadview ICE facility. He sat in the vehicle with agents for about a half hour outside the facility before another agent gave him a citation for impeding a federal officer.

They then returned him to his own car and wished him a good day, he said.