Car chases, tear gas, shootings: Chicago immigration crackdown testimony continues for second day
The Illinois Accountability Commission heard testimony about car chases, tear gas and shootings by federal agents during the Chicago immigration crackdown in fall of 2025 the Trump administration called Operation Midway Blitz.
The men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that carried out the sweeping raids, deportations and arrests were put under a microscope, accused of acting lawlessly with permission from the White House.
The commission heard testimony from witnesses, officials, lawyers and victims of these actions for the second day on Tuesday.
The testimony claimed agents lied about their vehicles being boxed in, or claimed there were threats of being shot by people who didn't have a gun. Some testified agents continued on high speed chases when told not to.
On Oct. 14, 2025, just after 10:15 a.m., a border patrol pursuit raced through the East Side neighborhood on Chicago's Southeast Side. In bodycam video from the agents presented to the commission Tuesday, an agent is trying to get permission to perform a PIT maneuver.
"Ask [inaudible] if I can PIT. Ask him," the agent says to his partner in the vehicle. "Tell him I'm not certified, though. Yeah, advise driver's not certified. Tell him."
A Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT, Maneuver is a technique used by law enforcement to force a vehicle to turn abruptly 180 degrees, which then causes the car to stall and stop.
That day, the agents were chasing the car through side streets at 50 miles per hour. Using a PIT maneuver at 40 miles an hour, the state of Illinois said, can be deadly.
The agents are given an order from another Border Patrol member about 15 minutes later to stop following the car.
"Stop following. Stop following," says the radio.
"Hey, he said stop following," the driver's partner says.
"Huh?" says the driver.
"He said stop following," the partner repeats.
"Who?" the driver says, and despite the call to stop, continues his pursuit
Surveillance videos shows the border patrol agents crash into the car just minutes later. Both occupants fall out, then take off running, leading to a foot chase into a nearby grocery store.
"Call the police!" the woman yells as the agent handcuffs her.
"We are the police!" the angent counters.
"You are not the police!" the woman shouts back.
"We are here fighting for your crimes," the agent snaps at the bystander as he pulls the woman in cuffs to her feet and starts to escort her out of the store.
"I have no crimes," the woman snaps back as they leave.
Within minutes after the crash, protesters surrounded the federal agents, blowing whistles and shouting at the federal agents. The agents, who are wearing tactical gear and gas masks, are seen on body cam discussing plans to "gas the street."
Chicago police officers were called to help manage the increasingly tense scene. They arrived in their normal gear and without gas masks. In the bodycam video, a supervisor from the Chicago Police Department wearing a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a bulletproof vest approaches the federal agents.
"My guys are walking up, so I'm going to ask no tear gas, alright?" he says to the agent. "They're walking up."
"No tear gas?" the agent asks.
"Yeah," the supervisor replies.
"That's fine, that's fine, it's just, if they start to collapse, what do you want us to do?" the agent asks.
"No, again, tear gas," the CPD supervisor replies.
State officials testified that a few isolated threats in the crowd of protesters emerged. Federal agents immediately released tear gas onto the street, flooding the area in smoke. Thirteen police officers were gassed along with the rest of the protesters.
"That f-----g gas works damn good," a federal agent says on bodycam video from inside his vehicle with the windows closed. "Tell 'em sorry. Dude, tell 'em sorry about that."
State investigators say permission for the federal agents to be lawless came from the stop. They played a clip of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Fox News.
"To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct for your duties, anyone trying to stop you is committing a felony," Miller said.
"The bad decisions of these agents came with no consequences," said Luis Saucedo, Illinois Accountability Commission member. "No discipline or termination or referral for investigation. This commission intends to change that."
Christopher Parente, the attorney who represents Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by a border patrol agent in Brighton Park after federal agents claimed she rammed their car then later admitted she didn't and dropped charges, put it bluntly.
"We are trusting that this commission and Gov. Pritzker are going to follow through and bring accountability," he said.
Martinez was arrested after being shot and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, but the charges were later dropped and the government was forced to release video and text messages between federal agents bragging and joking about shooting her.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security released a statement when asked about the Illinois hearings, writing, "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. Where is his investigation into his own policies that allowed Sheridan Gorman's killer to be released from jail to go on and commit her heinous murder?"
Gorman is the Loyola University student who was allegedly shot and killed by Jose Medina, an unauthorized migrant from Venezuela who has been in the U.S. on asylum and, according to his attorney, was bussed to Chicago from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott. Medina had prior arrests for retail theft in 2023 and had failed to appear in court. He does not appear to have been involved in any immigration operations during Operation Midway Blitz and has no known prior arrests for violent crimes. He is charged with murder and remains jailed awaiting trial.
DHS repeatedly invoked the name of Katie Abraham, a Glenview native, to justify their aggressive tactics during Operation Midway Blitz. She was killed in a drunk driving crash in Urbana in Jan. 2025 in which the other drive was an unauthorized migrant.
Abraham's father approved of the administration doing so, but her mother said she did not.
"The Trump administration preyed on her name and used it in a vile way," Denise Lorence said Monday on the first day of the hearings. "They're using her name only for their political gain, and it's wrong, and I've had enough."
On Monday, officials screened video showing just one hour of federal immigration enforcement during one October morning.
Minutes before agents threw tear gas at a protesting crowd, they pulled someone from a vehicle and tackled him. They also screeched to a halt in front of a young girl, and then questioned her citizenship, before moving on.
Other video presented Monday included a run-in between Evanston residents and CBP agents on Halloween in which a U.S. citizen was heard screaming as agents pinned him to the ground. He was arrested for assaulting officers, but charges were later dismissed.
Video was also shown Monday of a run-in between Evanston residents and Border Patrol agents on Halloween day. A U.S. citizen was heard screaming as the agents pinned him down.
Jennifer Moriarty , a witness who filmed some of the footage in Evanston, testified that officers grabbed her by the neck, shoved her in a vehicle, and then got angry at other bystanders.
"He said he was going to shoot them," Moriarty said.
Members of the Illinois Accountability Commission said they have reviewed nearly 100 hours of footage from body cameras worn by ICE and CBP agents. The investigation also involved the collection of hours of video from surveillance cameras, cellphones, and social media.
A total of 16 different incidents involving federal agents are part of the commission's investigation.
On Thursday, the commission will present recommendations to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.