The Department of Homeland Security intensified immigration enforcement in the Chicago area Tuesday, with officials and agents saying the operation produced ‘‘many arrests’’ and included the agency’s top political official on the ground.
Border Patrol personnel and ICE agents worked in concert as part of a campaign federal officials described as an extension of Operation Midway Blitz and the Border Patrol’s Operation At-Large, which U.S. agents used in Los Angeles in August. Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino posted video of vehicles moving northbound on the Interstate 55 toward Chicago, writing, "Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived...Operation At-Large is here to continue the mission we started in Los Angeles—to make the city safer by targeting and arresting criminal illegal aliens. We are already going hard this morning!!! Many arrests."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in the region and oversaw a morning operation in Elgin, Illinois, according to Border Patrol sources and posts attributed to Noem. Officials said a tactical team served a felony arrest warrant for illegal re-entry in at least one case and that a roadblock led to a forced entry into a residence. Noem posted a video showing an individual being led from a house during predawn hours and said the department removed what she described as violent offenders from the streets with arrests for assault, driving under the influence and felony stalking.
"President Trump has been clear: If politicians will not put the safety of their citizens first, this administration will," Noem said in the post. "I was on the ground in Chicago today to make clear we are not backing down. Just this morning, DHS took violent offenders off the streets with arrests for assault, DUI, and felony stalking. Our work is only beginning." She also referenced an incident in which an ICE agent was dragged and severely injured by a vehicle driven by an immigrant resisting arrest.
ICE officials also said agents located and arrested a man identified as Aldo Salazar Bahena, a convicted murderer who had been held for about 20 years before his release from a maximum-security state prison near Joliet. State authorities at Stateville Correctional Center declined to honor a federal detainer, and officials said Salazar Bahena was released in line with Illinois policies regarding detainers. ICE located and re-arrested him three days after the state release, agency sources said.
Salazar Bahena, who entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1998, was convicted in connection with a 2005 homicide and was sentenced after a 2016 conviction in Kane County. Following that conviction, an immigration judge signed a 2016 order of removal, according to ICE.
Department officials and those supporting the enforcement actions framed the operations as necessary to remove criminal noncitizens who, they say, present a danger to communities. The deployment in the Chicago area follows similar multi-agency enforcement efforts in other metropolitan areas earlier this year, including Los Angeles, where Border Patrol personnel described Operation At-Large as targeting criminal aliens.
Local officials and immigrant advocates have criticized such federal actions in the past, citing concerns about civil liberties, local cooperation with federal immigration authorities and the impacts on immigrant communities. State and local decisions not to honor federal detainers have been a recurring point of tension between immigration enforcement agencies and jurisdictions with policies limiting cooperation with ICE.
Federal officials did not immediately provide a full tally of arrests or a comprehensive list of charges for those detained Tuesday. DHS and ICE statements attributed specific arrest figures and case descriptions to agency sources in field operations but did not release formal aggregated statistics at the time of the operations.
The department said the operations would continue as part of ongoing enforcement priorities. Noem and other senior administration officials have signaled that similar actions will be pursued in other jurisdictions where they say state and local policies hinder federal immigration enforcement.