The mother of the woman whose name the Trump administration used to justify the sweeping federal immigration crackdown that swept across Chicagoland last fall told an Illinois commission Monday that she had “had enough” of officials invoking her daughter’s memory.
In one of her few public comments since the Operation Midway Blitz surge, Denise Lorence, mother of Katie Abraham, testified along with North Side and Evanston residents, who looked back with anger and dismay on federal agents’ often combative efforts in their neighborhoods during the two-month enforcement campaign.
“You may have heard her name, not because of the compassionate, caring person that she was. … You’ve probably heard her name because Operation Midway Blitz was named in her honor,” Lorence said Monday. “This is what my family has been dragged into.”
Abraham, 20, was killed in a drunken driving crash by an immigrant without permanent legal status. The Trump administration repeatedly cited her death to justify the crackdown. Her father, Joe Abraham, supported the administration’s actions as they drew attention to his daughter’s death. Lorence wrote in the Tribune in October that her daughter would not have wanted her name used as it was.
“I wouldn’t wish the emotional turmoil that I’ve experienced on anyone,” Lorence said.
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Lorence’s words were the centerpiece of a day filled with testimony and some previously unreleased evidence, including videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents’ actions, as Gov. JB Pritzker’s Illinois Accountability Commission began to wrap up its public hearings. One more hearing is set for Tuesday.
“My hope is that folks will understand that this could happen to any community, to any neighborhood, to anyone in this country at any time the Trump administration deems that they want to inflict that kind of pain and terror,” testified Brian Kolp, an Old Irving Park resident and a former prosecutor with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office who shouted at agents outside his home.
Pritzker launched the commission — which has no direct law-enforcement powers — to scrutinize federal agents’ actions during Operation Midway Blitz, which lasted 64 days from early September to early November. The packed hearing room inside the Michael A. Bilandic Building in downtown Chicago saw hours of video and witness testimony detailing the monthslong aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
Leadership from the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts, including former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who headed much of the operation before he retired this year amid criticism, declined to attend, said the commission’s lead counsel, Ahmed Baset.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson on Monday criticized the hearing as an attempt by Pritzker to “smear our law enforcement” and invoked the death of Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University student who Cook County prosecutors say was killed by José Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan migrant.
Most of those who did testify on Monday were North Side and suburban residents who witnessed agents move through their neighborhoods using force in Lakeview, Old Irving Park, Evanston and elsewhere. Some witnesses from immigrant communities declined to participate in the in-person hearings, citing fears of retaliation from the federal government, Baset said. The commission also played a video about how the raids affected Little Village.
“I was angry, I was so angry. I was livid. I wasn’t afraid of them because I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a white woman, and there was nothing happening — so I wasn’t afraid. I was angry that they were doing this in my community,” Jennifer Moriarty, the Evanston resident who said federal immigration authorities detained her for five hours after she attempted to record agents on Halloween, said of the moment she was detained.
During the operation, federal agents arrested thousands of immigrants, most without a criminal record, and repeatedly deployed tear gas and pepper spray on protesters, including U.S. citizens and children. A Tribune analysis last month found roughly 3,800 people were detained and nearly 2,500 immigrants were deported during the operation, most of them with no criminal record. The Trump administration has said the crackdown targeted the “worst of the worst” individuals who were both in the country without legal status and had a violent criminal record.
“This is not hyperbole. This is the evidence. This is Operation Midway Blitz,” Patricia Brown Holmes, vice chair of the Illinois Accountability Commission, said as she opened the hearing. “The federal government has consistently failed to deliver accountability, and culpable agents are still roaming our streets.”
Chicagoans overwhelmingly opposed last fall’s immigration raids, according to a recent Suffolk University/baiduhai survey.
Hamstrung by the state’s limited authority to restrict federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Border Patrol, Pritzker said he launched the commission as a way to collect and preserve evidence that could be used by a future Congress or presidential administration, or in potential legal proceedings.
The commission, headed by former federal Judge Rubén Castillo, released its preliminary report in December, laying out issues it hoped to address, such as limiting agents’ use of tear gas, pepper spray and identity-concealing masks. The report said, for example, it would want to improve “existing federal standards for use of crowd control weapons.”
However, the report offered little insight into how those goals would be accomplished. The commission has no subpoena power. A final report is expected later this week.
Even before Operation Midway Blitz launched on Sept. 8, Pritzker had asked Illinoisans to record and share ICE and Border Patrol activity.
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Prior to the accountability commission’s activities, some videos people took were used to announce the Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office’s case that obtained a federal judge’s temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops onto city and suburban streets. The videos also helped other state officials, activists and journalists keep track of federal officials’ actions in neighborhoods, even as the agents themselves remain largely masked and anonymous.
Video footage shown Monday, much of it from body-worn cameras and therefore from the point of view of federal agents, showed a handful of chaotic scenes from the fall when agents attempted to detain people off Chicago’s streets and were met with loud resistance from neighbors.
In one video sequence, residents of Old Irving Park in October shouted at agents as they tried to take people into custody and prepared to deploy tear gas.
“Explain yourself to Judge Ellis on Tuesday, (expletive),” Kolp said to an agent in the footage, referring to the litigation on federal agents’ actions that at the time was being heard by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis.
Kolp, in his testimony, said he appeared before the commission to raise awareness about what happened.
“It’s still interesting to me that there are folks who don’t know about these abuses, who didn’t see what happened during Midway Blitz or what happened in Minneapolis,” Kolp said.
On the commission’s final hearing day, expected testimony will focus on what Castillo described as a lack of consequences from the Trump administration for agents’ actions during the surge.