The building was purchased by Wisconsin-based investor Trinity Flood in January 2020, according to Cook County records. On October 1, the day after the raid, a judge reviewed an emergency motion from Wells Fargo seeking to appoint Matthew Tarshis of Frontline Real Estate Partners as the property’s receiver.

Flood purchased three multifamily properties in South Shore in 2020. The neighborhood, which had the highest number of eviction filings in Chicago from 2015-2019 according to the Law Center for Better Housing, has seen a rise in outside real estate investors since the 2017 announcement of the Obama Presidential Center’s construction in the neighboring Jackson Park.

Wells Fargo Bank foreclosed on the building in mid-2024, bringing a $27 million lawsuit against Flood for missed loan payments. In late 2024, the City began closing its largest migrant shelters and, through state funding assistance distributed via Catholic Charities and moving support from New Life Church, relocated many families to buildings such as this one.

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“The same administration that bussed them here is the same administration that is hunting them down to deport them,” said Castro, referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, a Republican who sent thousands of migrants who were granted asylum by the federal government to Chicago in 2023. “There is a pretty large pocket of Venezuelans in the South Shore area. Many of them were applying for some kind of adjustment of status, whether it was asylum or other things …. They were trying to adjust through the guidelines set by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS].”