An Illinois commission tasked with investigating the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation in the state last year said it had identified multiple incidents in which federal agents should be investigated for misconduct and potential criminal charges.
Members of the Illinois Accountability Commission, an independent board of nine members that includes a former federal judge and attorneys appointed by Gov. JB Pritzker, recommended in a final report Thursday that law enforcement agencies and prosecutors investigate the conduct of federal agents during Operation Midway Blitz, the immigration deportation operation the Trump administration launched last year in Chicago.
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Patricia Brown Holmes, the vice chair of the commission and a former state court judge, said the group’s report identified incidents in which it determined there was “reasonable cause to believe that federal agents should be formally investigated” by law enforcement agencies for “possible violations of agency policy, state and federal criminal law and individual constitutional rights.”
The commission said this week that it interviewed more than 60 witnesses and reviewed about 100 hours of body-worn camera video from ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers. It also reviewed hundreds of hours of video from surveillance cameras, personal devices and social media and held listening sessions in different neighborhoods.
The commission’s report found that “federal immigration agents engaged in dangerous high-speed vehicular pursuits, extreme physical force, indiscriminate use of chemical agents, shootings, beatings, and other violent acts, amounting to unconstitutional uses of force.”
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a statement that it can press charges against someone only if a local law enforcement agency reviews evidence and presents it to the state’s attorney’s office, per state law. Thus far, it has not received a request from law enforcement to review any investigation related to on-duty conduct of a federal immigration agent, the statement said. The state’s attorney’s office said it can issue a voluntary request for a federal agent to appear in a court case, but the Justice Department decides whether the agent needs to comply.
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