Immigration enforcement operations should not be taking place in and around a day care center serving little kids.

That we need even to type that sentence in this 177-year-old newspaper boggles our collective mind. But such is life at present in Chicago, where a spluttering, increasingly dangerous series of battles is being waged on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

Yes, we know that precisely what happened at the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion day care at 2550 W. Addison St. is disputed. That’s not our point.

Parents and workers there, backed up by local Democratic politicians, said that the targeted woman told ICE agents (speaking Spanish) that she had papers, only then to have her face slammed by a masked agent into a glass wall.

Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, described the situation thus: “They dragged an educator outside of her place of employment.” Tara Goodarzi, a parent, reportedly said at a North Center rally Wednesday night that the woman had been “targeted — stolen — on her way to care for our children by armed intruders from a private business without a warrant.” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, 5th District, a potential mayoral candidate, described the woman as “a trusted, loved member of her community with a work permit who has dedicated her life to caring for children.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security disputed the woman’s status as well as many of these and other statements, saying that the woman and a male companion had ignored a vehicular traffic stop attempt by identifiable ICE agents, then fled at high speed into the retail center parking lot, and subsequently the woman had “barricaded herself” in the center, “recklessly endangering the children inside,” which meant that agents who had never intended to target the center then had to run in there to get her.

Did they, though? Even if everything ICE says is true?

We say they did not. We say that all reasonable people should say the same.

Nobody disputes that children were being dropped off at the time. Nobody disputes that little kids are easily traumatized by witnessing such events. Nobody disputes that innocent fellow teachers were similarly made to doubt the safety of their workplace. Nobody disputes that parents who worry about their kids started worrying about them a whole lot more after witnessing this series of federal actions in, of all places, a day care center.

We say that these agents should have stood down the moment the woman entered the day care center. They should have been smart enough to see that the collateral damage would be far too great.

Good law enforcement officers make these judgment calls each and every day. They weigh pros and cons with an eye to protection, first and foremost. This was the moral equivalent of firing a shot at a fleeing target in the presence of a crowd of innocent people.

We’ve written many times about the pernicious impact of gun violence reaching far beyond the obvious victim: Bystanders are traumatized, communities are made to feel insecure, anger becomes the pervasive community emotion. Taken together, these matters lead to all manner of undesirable outcomes.

All this to catch a fleeing longtime day care worker who (allegedly) was not authorized to be in the country and had (allegedly) paid some people to bring her teen kids to Chicago so as to reunite her family? Please.

Has our federal government become so blinded by its immigration mission that it has taken leave of its senses?

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