[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 145 (Tuesday, September 15, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4708-S4709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Department of Homeland Security
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week marked 1 year since President
Trump launched an assault against my home State of Illinois and
characterized his Operation Midway Blitz. For months, chaos and terror
reigned supreme in the streets and the city that I loved and am honored
to represent.
This operation was supposedly targeting ``the worst of the worst,''
as President Trump has claimed: Rapists, murderers, terrorists, child
predators, we are going after them. We are going to arrest them, and if
they are not properly documented, we are going to deport them.
It ended up targeting not that population but American citizens and
immigrants who have built their lives and raised their families in
Illinois, people who posed no threat whatsoever to the public safety.
Let me give you two examples. One was when an ICE agent in the
streets of Chicago killed Silverio Villegas Gonzalez minutes after he
had dropped off his children at a daycare in Franklin Park, a suburb of
Chicago. Mr. Gonzalez lived in the Chicago area for nearly 20 years.
His children were forced to enter foster care because of his murder.
Immediately after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security
claimed Mr. Villegas Gonzalez had hit and dragged an ICE agent with his
car when he and another officer attempted to conduct a traffic stop
causing serious injuries. However, there was a video of what actually
happened, and it contradicted the claims made by the Department of
Homeland Security.
In fact, Mr. Villegas Gonzalez is not shown hitting or dragging any
officer with his car; and in the aftermath, one of the officers said
his injuries were ``nothing major.''
In another disturbing example of the horrors of Operation Midway
Blitz, an agent of the Department of Homeland Security shot my
constituent Marimar Martinez--not once, not twice, five times.
Afterwards, the shooter texted his fellow agents and bragged ``I fired
5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.''
The administration called Ms. Martinez a domestic terrorist. Ms.
Martinez was on her way to her church. She had some clothing she was
going to donate to the church clothing drive. That is when the ICE
agents pulled her over. She was driving while Hispanic, which under the
Midway Blitz rules was enough to stop her, threaten her, and shoot her
five times.
What happened to the charges against her? All dropped. Not one single
charge was prosecuted. This poor young woman, on her way to her church
to give some clothing to a clothing drive, shot five times by ICE
agents, and no charges filed against her at all.
Normally, when Federal agents engage in excessive force like I have
just described, the Federal Bureau of Investigation steps in to
investigate. They follow up, gathering evidence, videos, witnesses.
Instead, following the shooting of Miramar Martinez, FBI Director
Kash Patel took to social media to falsely accuse Ms. Martinez of
attacking immigration agents.
He said, ``Attack our law enforcement, and this FBI will find you and
bring you to justice.'' Tough talk when the video shows that this young
woman did not engage in any illegal conduct.
Today, when I asked Kash Patel when he appeared before the Senate
Judiciary Committee about his failure to investigate the shootings of
Mr. Gonzalez and Ms. Martinez, he claimed there are ongoing
investigations. We will see. It has been more than a year. He refused
when he had a chance, and I gave him that chance, to apologize for
attacking Ms. Martinez.
I don't have much faith in the director of the FBI Kash Patel, but if
the FBI is, in fact, investigating these shootings, they must cooperate
with State and local officials to bring these people to justice as
well. If you go to the website of the FBI and look under the issue of
civil rights, you will find the claim of that Agency that they are the
leaders in investigating crimes involving civil rights; and
historically
[[Page S4709]]
that has been the case, but not under this administration.
If there is wrongdoing by an ICE agent or a DHS official or any
suspicion that a crime has been committed, you hear nothing but
crickets when it comes to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Thankfully, the people of my home State are stepping in and shining a
light on this administration's wrongdoing. Governor Pritzker
established the Illinois Accountability Commission, an independent
State board to investigate and document the conduct of Federal agents
during Operation Midway Blitz.
After a 6-month investigation, the Commission found that most of
these arrested under the operation were ``not the worst of the worst.''
The Commission found that from September through December of 2025,
last year, the Department of Homeland Security detained over 3,900
people in Chicago; an estimated 85 percent had no criminal convictions.
The worst of the worst? No.
And Operation Midway Blitz had negative economic consequences as
well. I have been to these neighborhoods: Little Village, Pilsen. I
have seen what is going on. People live in fear. They don't come out of
their homes to go to church or to go shopping; they ask neighbors to do
it for them, which they willingly do. But they are afraid of what will
happen if ICE returns.
A new report by the Great Cities Institute at the University of
Illinois Chicago shows that the failed operation of Midway Blitz of the
Trump administration cost Cook County $1.26 billion in lost retail
activity and restaurants.
Unfortunately, this administration has not stopped circumventing the
Constitution and the laws of this country. In immigration courts around
the country, immigration judges, employees of the Justice Department, I
might add, have been holding so-called ``mega master'' court hearings.
In these hearings, a single judge hears between 100 and 200 cases over
the course of just a few hours.
Last month, I decided I would go personally to see these courts. I
went to the Chicago Immigration Court to observe one of these ``mega
master'' hearings. That day, 850 people were scheduled to appear. The
court was so packed that people missed their hearing times because they
couldn't get from the lobby to the courtroom in time.
There is no way that individuals can meaningfully defend themselves
or have due process in this kind of a hearing. I observed a
particularly troubling ``mega master'' docket for children. What I saw
was heartbreaking. Children who State court found had been abused,
abandoned, or neglected, are forced to appear in court without parents
and explain why they deserve to stay in this country, all while facing
language and cognitive barriers.
The last case on the docket that morning was a high school-aged
Guatemalan child. Remember, the State courts have a finding that these
children have been abandoned or abused or neglected. Because of the
delay in finding a translator that day who spoke his dialect, he was
forced to sit and watch every other child before him before he was
ordered deported.
After rambling off a litany of directives through the translator, the
judge asked the child if he had any questions. The young boy said ``Why
are you sending me back to Guatemala? What did I do?''
The answer is devastatingly clear. That poor boy is just the latest
victim of President Trump and Stephen Miller's evil vision of a hateful
America that turns its back on immigrants.
The President's reckless mass deportation campaign has steamrolled
the rights and liberties guaranteed by our Constitution. Its countless
victims including Marimar Martinez and Silverio Villegas Gonzalez
deserve justice and accountability.
That is why my Illinois colleagues and I requested an investigation
by the DHS Office of Inspector General into the patterns of misconduct
and unconstitutional use of force during DHS's mass deportation
operations including Midway Blitz.
Let me be clear, it is long past time that Congress holds the
President and his MAGA loyalists accountable for failing to focus on
public safety.
I am retiring at the end of this year. We have very few meetings of
this Senate left before the new Senate is brought in to be sworn in on
January 3. We still have time to pass meaningful immigration
legislation. We still have time, on a bipartisan basis, to resolve some
of the many issues that face us.
I just left a press conference where we talked about the restaurant
industry. We talked about food service and the importance of
immigrants. You may not notice in the wait staff many immigrants, but
believe me, behind that swinging door are a lot of people who are
undocumented and working. A friend of mine who is in the business in
Chicago said if you took the undocumented out of Chicago, you could
just start closing down restaurants and hotels.
These people are hard-working people taking jobs that Americans,
frankly, don't want because they are so darn tough, but they do it for
their families as all immigrants have done in the past, my own family
included. Why do we sneer at these people who work so hard, who make
this economy hum, who take the jobs which other Americans won't touch?
Why do we want to deport them back to situations that could be the
scene of the crime for the very reasons that they came to the United
States? That just isn't fair, and it isn't realistic.
We still have time to do something. When it comes to the Dream Act, I
will continue to fight for that as long as I can stand on this floor of
the Senate, and, thereafter, if necessary. We have got to come together
on a bipartisan basis and do something constructive to set the
immigration laws in this country on the right track. It has been 30
years since we have done anything of substance on immigration--30
years, and things have changed dramatically in this country and in this
world.
We can do more, and we should do more. Operation Midway Blitz was the
extreme. Innocent people were killed in the streets of Chicago and
other cities across the United States.
It is only right that we investigate these crimes and find out if
there is any violation of civil rights and prosecute it if there is.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.