Lightfoot Op-Ed: “The victims of Operation Midway Blitz deserve justice — and the clock is ticking.”
The ICE Accountability Project today called for an immediate investigation after ICE agents reportedly crashed into a civilian’s car, tased a man during an arrest, and pointed weapons at bystanders in Albany Park.
The incident, first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, comes as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is raising broader concerns about the lack of prosecutions tied to Operation Midway Blitz. In a new op-ed published by Crain’s Chicago Business, Lightfoot writes that nearly nine months after the operation began, no federal immigration agents have been criminally charged in Cook County.
“Operation Midway Blitz may be over. The violence is not,” said the ICE Accountability Project. “CPD must immediately open an investigation and tell the public what happened here — and what is being done about the dozens of other incidents reported across Chicago over the past nine months. As all local police departments must uphold their duty to serve and protect.”
“Prosecutors must do their jobs: investigate whether charges are warranted, file them when they are, and prosecute the cases,” the statement continued. “Nearly nine months in, there have been no charges against federal agents who appear to have broken the law. We cannot accept a reality where residents are harmed by their own government and no one is held responsible. That must change before more people get hurt.”
Lightfoot’s op-ed argues that local accountability cannot end with documentation, outrage, or civil litigation. She calls for a coordinated whole-of-government response to alleged abuses by federal immigration agents, noting that Cook County has the institutional tools and legal authority to act but has shown little visible urgency.
Read Mayor Lightfoot’s full op-ed in Crain’s Chicago Business: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/commentary/ccb-ice-arrests-lightfoot-oped-20260602/
Nearly Nine Months Later, Zero ICE Agents Charged in Cook County
By Lori E. Lightfoot
When community safety is threatened, public officials should respond with urgency, coordination and accountability.
That is why Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s newly announced Regional Transit Task Force deserves recognition. Riders on the CTA, Metra and Pace deserve to feel safe, and violence on public transit demands a serious response.
Burke’s office assembled a broad coalition of local, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies to coordinate intelligence-sharing, accelerate prosecutions and focus resources on violent crime across the transit system. Burke herself described the effort as part of “a great and urgent need to get ahead of this right now.”
That is what leadership should look like.
Which is what makes the State’s Attorney’s response to Operation Midway Blitz so striking.
In particular, over the fall of 2025 and since, communities across Chicagoland have witnessed deeply troubling encounters with federal immigration agents. Silverio Villegas González was killed by a federal agent in Franklin Park. Marimar Martinez was shot five times during another federal immigration operation on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Other residents have shared how they were beaten, assaulted or subjected to excessive force during Operation Midway Blitz.
These are some of the gravest forms of government overreach imaginable.
Yet despite mounting evidence and first-hand accounts of violence and excessive force, no federal immigration agent has been criminally charged in Cook County.
While transit safety has prompted task forces, press conferences, interagency coordination and repeated public statements, Cook County’s top prosecutor has been notably absent from the growing conversation surrounding accountability for federal immigration enforcement abuses.
Across the country, district attorneys are joining their state and local counterparts in coordinating responses to aggressive federal immigration operations. Just two weeks ago, a coalition of 10 DAs joined together in vowing to prosecute federal agents who target voting sites.
Missing from that list? Cook County — the second-largest in the country.
In contrast, Hennepin County in Minnesota has emerged as a shining star. County Attorney Mary Moriarty has shown what proactive leadership can actually look like. Her office has opened investigations into multiple alleged incidents involving federal immigration agents, filed felony assault charges against ICE officers, coordinated with the Minnesota Attorney General and state investigators, and publicly rejected the idea that federal agents are somehow beyond the reach of state criminal law.
Here at home, we have seen the opposite.
For months, suburban communities like Franklin Park and Broadview — ground zero for much of Operation Midway Blitz — struggled under the strain of aggressive federal immigration operations. These are not large jurisdictions with endless resources. Franklin Park has fewer than 50 full-time officers. Broadview has roughly half that number. Local leaders repeatedly raised concerns about the public safety consequences these operations were creating inside their communities.
Those communities needed additional support. They needed coordination. They needed a partner willing to bring agencies together, marshal investigative resources and treat these incidents with the seriousness they deserved.
That is exactly the kind of coordinated effort Burke brought to transit safety. But when it came to allegations involving federal immigration agents, that same urgency was nowhere to be found.
There is clear precedent for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office stepping in when local resources are insufficient or conflicts exist. For decades, the CCSAO has investigated officer-involved shootings and allegations of police misconduct through dedicated internal units and formal protocols.
When serious questions arise surrounding use of force by local law enforcement, the office does not simply stand back and wait for completed case files to arrive. It helps drive investigations forward.
The CCSAO has over 100 investigators, former law enforcement personnel and assistant state’s attorneys specifically trained to work these cases. It has long maintained dedicated felony review units that work around the clock alongside investigating agencies, advising on evidence collection, probable cause standards and charging decisions in real time.
The office already possesses the institutional tools, expertise and authority necessary to coordinate investigations involving armed law enforcement actors operating within Cook County.
The problem is not capacity.
The problem is will.
While a Cook County judge’s recent decision denying the appointment of a special prosecutor stated that prosecutors cannot move forward without completed investigations, the broader leadership vacuum surrounding Operation Midway Blitz remains impossible to ignore.
To be clear, Illinois has not ignored Operation Midway Blitz altogether. State officials collected testimony, documented alleged abuses and brought litigation to challenge federal tactics and prevent future harm. The work of the Commission led by former Chief Judge Castillo is commendable.
But that is not enough.
Outside of the single investigation allegedly opened 235 days after Silverio’s killing by the federal government, where are the investigations by local law enforcement?
Where are the coordinated efforts to examine the shooting of Marimar Martinez?
Or the repeated allegations of excessive force tied to Operation Midway Blitz?
Both municipal law enforcement and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart — who oversees one of the largest sheriff’s police departments in the country — have remained largely absent from the broader accountability efforts.
There has been no shortage of overheated rhetoric surrounding federal immigration enforcement. What has been missing are concrete steps to hold agents accountable when they violate people’s rights.
Public officials showed with the announcement of the public transit task force exactly what coordinated urgency can look like.
Yet when the allegations involve federal immigration agents, all we have instead seen is delayed or non-existent investigations, institutional finger-pointing and a vacuum of visible leadership from people who have the legal authority to address the seemingly widespread abuses during Operation Midway Blitz.
This moment requires a coordinated whole-of-government accountability response.
The victims of Operation Midway Blitz deserve justice — and the clock is ticking.
Lori E. Lightfoot served as the 56th mayor of Chicago and a former federal prosecutor. A nationally recognized leader in police accountability and oversight, she is the founder of the ICE Accountability Project.
