News chronological

AMERICANALMANAC (Charles McAdams) - Operation Midway Blitz: ICE arrests hundreds in Chicago as Illinois Democrats fight federal agents instead of illegal immigrant crime Wed Sep 9 18:35:25 2026

Federal agents have arrested nearly 550 illegal immigrants in the Chicago area under Operation Midway Blitz, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker responded not by addressing the criminal aliens in his state but by pushing to prosecute the agents who detained them. The Department of Homeland Security launched the enforcement operation on September 8, 2025, sending […] The post Operation Midway Blitz: ICE arrests hundreds in Chicago as Illinois Democrats fight federal agents instead of illegal immigrant crime appeared first on American Almanac .

Federal agents have arrested nearly 550 illegal immigrants in the Chicago area under Operation Midway Blitz, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker responded not by addressing the criminal aliens in his state but by pushing to prosecute the agents who detained them. The Department of Homeland Security launched the enforcement operation on September 8, 2025, sending ICE teams into Chicago to target illegal immigrants with criminal records, the kind of offenders that Illinois's own sanctuary policies have shielded from federal authorities for years. DHS named the operation in honor of Katie Abraham, a college student killed in a hit-and-run by Julio Cucul-Bol, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who should never have been on American roads. National Review reported that the crackdown came as a direct response to Illinois's refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Illinois became a sanctuary state in 2017 under the TRUST Act, which bars local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration agents. That law created the conditions DHS says allowed criminal illegal immigrants to settle in Chicago with little fear of deportation. Nearly 550 arrests, and half weren't even the original targets The scale of the operation tells its own story. AP News reported that ICE arrested nearly 550 people in the Chicago area since the operation began. Roughly 50 to 60 percent of those arrests were targeted, specific individuals with criminal records or outstanding removal orders. The remaining 40 to 50 percent were so-called collateral arrests: people agents encountered in the field who turned out to be in the country illegally. Marcos Charles, acting head of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, pushed back on the suggestion that collateral arrests swept up harmless bystanders. "It doesn't mean that the collateral arrests are non-criminal. Some of our collateral arrests... also have criminal convictions and arrests. They just weren't the people we were looking for at the time." In other words, agents went looking for convicted criminals and kept finding more convicted criminals along the way. That volume of criminal illegal immigrants concentrated in a single metro area is a direct product of sanctuary policy, a policy Illinois Democrats have defended for nearly a decade. The Washington Examiner reported that approximately 250 arrests had been made in an earlier count, with the operation specifically targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records across Chicago and the broader state. The number continued to climb as agents remained in the field. Pritzker's answer: investigate the agents, not the criminals Governor Pritzker did not respond to the operation by reconsidering his state's sanctuary framework. He did not call for a review of the policies that allowed Cucul-Bol to remain free before he killed Katie Abraham. Instead, he created the Illinois Accountability Commission, an eight-member body whose members he personally appointed, to investigate the conduct of federal agents carrying out the arrests. The commission's report identified what it called over a dozen incidents of alleged federal agent misconduct during Operation Midway Blitz, including the death of an illegal immigrant shot by an ICE officer. Fox News reported that Pritzker then pushed for criminal investigations into the ICE agents involved. AP News reported that the shooting occurred on September 12, after a man allegedly dragged an ICE officer during a traffic stop. DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called the governor's move exactly what it looked like. "Governor Pritzker continues to refuse to do his job to protect his citizens from illegal alien crime and instead chooses to smear our law enforcement." Bis posed a question Pritzker has not answered: "Where is the investigation into his own policies that allowed Sheridan Gorman's killer to be released from jail to go on and commit her heinous murder?" Bis described the criminal prosecution push as "nothing more than a political stunt." Given that Pritzker hand-picked every member of the commission producing the findings, the characterization is difficult to dispute. Chicago's mayor told police to stand down Pritzker was not alone in obstructing the operation. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson made clear his police department would not assist federal agents. "We will not have our police officers who are working hard every single day to drive down crime deputized to do traffic stops and checkpoints for the president." Johnson framed noncooperation as protecting his officers' mission. But ICE was not asking Chicago police to run traffic stops. The operation targeted convicted criminals and individuals with active removal orders, people a functioning justice system would have already processed. Johnson's refusal meant federal agents worked without local backup in a city where they were actively unwelcome, increasing risk for everyone involved. Two U.S. citizens were briefly detained during the operation, a fact critics seized on. But in an operation involving nearly 550 arrests conducted without local police cooperation, two brief detentions, resolved quickly, reflect the difficulty of operating in a jurisdiction that refuses to share information with federal law enforcement. Pritzker told residents to film ICE agents instead of reporting criminals Just The News reported that Pritzker distributed multilingual "Know Your Rights" pamphlets and actively encouraged Illinois residents to film and share ICE arrests on social media. The governor cast himself as a defender of civil liberties. "Authoritarians thrive on your silence, be loud, for America." DHS offered a different reading of the governor's priorities. The department said the operation targeted "the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets." That framing is supported by the arrest numbers. When federal agents arrived in a sanctuary city and began enforcing immigration law, they found nearly 550 people to arrest, many with criminal records, in a matter of weeks. The supply of criminal illegal immigrants was not a surprise to anyone paying attention. It was a direct, predictable result of policies designed to prevent their removal. Katie Abraham's name on the operation tells the real story DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin explained the operation's name and purpose when it launched. "DHS is launching Operation Midway Blitz in honor of Katie Abraham who was killed in Illinois by a criminal illegal alien who should have never been in our country. This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago." Abraham was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run by Cucul-Bol, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. She was a college student. Her father, an Angel Father, has publicly criticized Pritzker's immigration stance, asking why the governor directs his energy toward protecting illegal immigrants rather than the citizens they harm. Operation Midway Blitz was not the first such enforcement action. Newsmax reported on the Cook County dimension of the operation. DHS had already deployed similar operations in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Boston, all cities where local leadership has resisted federal immigration enforcement. The pattern is consistent. Sanctuary jurisdictions refuse to cooperate. Criminal illegal immigrants accumulate. Federal agents move in over local objections. Democratic officials respond by attacking the agents rather than reconsidering the policies that created the problem. Pritzker wants criminal charges against ICE agents who arrested convicted criminals in his state. He does not want to answer for the sanctuary framework that let those criminals stay. Katie Abraham's family does not have the luxury of choosing which question matters more. The post Operation Midway Blitz: ICE arrests hundreds in Chicago as Illinois Democrats fight federal agents instead of illegal immigrant crime appeared first on American Almanac .