Investigative Report: No Evidence Criminal Gang Members Were Arrested During Midnight Chicago ICE Raid
The more we learn and observe about “Operation Midway Blitz” — the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown operation in Chicago that was purported to target violent criminals, including suspected members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization — the more it appears the whole thing is a ploy to terrorize and deport non-threatening migrants with questionable document status under the guise of going after “the worst of the worst.”
We previously reported on the raid of Sept. 30, when, just after midnight, some 300 federal agents, many of whom rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter, stormed a 130-unit apartment complex, indiscriminately yanked residents out of their homes for questioning, and made a total of 37 arrests. According to Fox 32 Chicago, a Border Patrol official said they were seeking six high-priority targets, including members of Tren de Aragua. After the raid was done, the Department of Homeland Security released a video montage of footage to warn every “criminal illegal alien” that the “darkness is no longer your ally,” and that “we will find you.”
Officials said they had captured two “confirmed” members of Tren de Aragua, including one on a terrorist watch list, and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller boldly claimed the building was “filled with TdA terrorists,” that the raid had “saved God knows how many lives,” and that it was “one of the most successful law enforcement operations that we’ve seen in this country.”
Well, according to extensive investigative reporting by ProPublica, virtually none of that is true, unless you’re a MAGA-fied bootlicker, in which case the arrests of 37 non-criminal brown people might still constitute a “successful law enforcement operation.”
From ProPublica:
A ProPublica investigation, however, has found little evidence to support the government’s claims. ProPublica has discovered the names of 21 of the detained Venezuelan men and women and interviewed 12 of them. We also spoke with dozens of their relatives, friends and neighbors. And we reviewed U.S. public records databases and court websites, examined court documents and social media accounts, obtained audio and video recordings made that night, and attended immigration court hearings.
Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names. ProPublica was nonetheless able to identify one of them, Ludwing Jeanpier Parra Pérez, from a press release that did not connect him to the raid. Parra denied that he is a member.
“I don’t have anything to do with that,” Parra, 24, said during an interview from an Indiana jail where at least 17 of the men were taken after the raid. “I’m very worried. I don’t know why they are saying that. I came here to find a better future for me and my family.”
Our review of criminal records indicates that Chicago police arrested Parra for drug possession and driving without a license after a traffic stop last year, but the charges were dropped. We found no other arrest records.
The outlet also highlighted the story of 28-year-old Jhonny Manuel Caicedo Fereira, a Venezuelan immigrant who was taken out of his apartment by armed Border Patrol agents and zip-tied while he was questioned along with others, including one man who agents questioned about his tattoos, asking him if he was a member of Tren de Aragua. Caicedo is no criminal — he had no observable ties to a gang, and no record with law enforcement in the U.S. outside of a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance — but he was still paraded along with his neighbors in front of the camera crew that was reportedly invited to film the raid, and he was ultimately deported back to Venezuela.
“I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”
ProPublica reported that it observed the hearings of eight people detained in the raid, and in none of those hearings did a government attorney mention pending criminal charges or suspected gang membership. Mark Rotert, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney in Chicago, told the publication that the absence of such allegations “raises a legitimate question as to whether any of the people in that building were really considered susceptible to prosecution.”
“Do they really believe they have people who are members of a violent organized crime gang?” Robert asked. “If they believe they have people who fit that criteria, I would be very surprised if they were satisfied with only deporting them.”
For months, NewsOne has been reporting on the immigration crackdowns in Chicago and across the country, and how the federal government claims it’s targeting hardened criminals, while court records and video evidence indicate agents are actually targeting, apprehending and/or disappearing laborers, green card holders, brown people who turned out to be U.S. citizens, non-criminals accused of overstaying their visas, preschool teachers, journalists, social media influencers, non-violent activists, exonerees falsely accused of violent crimes, and others who were literally arrested at their immigration hearings.
We’ve noted repeatedly that data consistently shows more than 70% of those detained by ICE and Border Patrol agents had no criminal records. We’ve chronicled the brutal tactics of agents, who, until recently, served under the leadership of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who has been admonished several times by federal Judge Sara Ellis for violating her previous order restricting the use of tear gas and lying about the conditions in Chicago that Bovino claims necessitate such violations.
“Operation Midway Blitz” is a farce, y’all. It’s a series of government-sanctioned human rights violations dressed up like an agenda to save America from the scourge of immigrant murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and gang members.
Even if we were to take the government at face value, it would mean two suspected gang members were arrested, and the other 35 were arrested simply because they were there. That’s the best-case scenario, and there’s no real reason to even believe that much.
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