Arrested by ICE in the Chicago area: Who are they?

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rolled into Chicago suburbs Tuesday morning, on a mission to make arrests of alleged criminals living here illegally.

But the ABC7 I-Team is looking at the people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, trying to answer who they are.

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It was still pitch dark when masked agents marched a man out of his Elgin home in handcuffs Tuesday morning, his arrest captured in a video posted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

In the video clip, Noem can be seen boarding an ICE vehicle along with agents, in-person for what her department has dubbed "Operation Midway Blitz."

But when Vanessa Morales-Coix of West Chicago saw the video, she immediately recognized a close family friend: Jose Morales.

"It was hard," Morales-Coix told the I-Team, fighting back tears. "Just because my family and I grew up with him."

Jose Morales was featured in part of the proof of performance video Noem shared on social media, with a caption reading in part, "This morning... DHS took violent offenders off the streets... accused of assault, DUI and felony stalking."

Morales says the man she knows as "Chilez" has lived in Elgin with his cousin as long as she can remember.

"It's sad that, you know, they're saying that they're going after criminals, and neither of them were," Morales-Coix said. "He had his work permit."

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U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood (D), who serves on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, says ICE leadership would only tell her on Monday they'd arrested 250 people since "Operation Midway Blitz" began on September 6.

Underwood said few details were provided on who ICE and other federal agencies are targeting for immigration enforcement.

"If someone, let's say, was arrested and not charged [locally], if they were not a U.S. citizen or not lawfully in the United States, they could be pursued by ICE... they are given regular updates from it sounds like a centralized database."

ICE said among those arrested on Monday was Aldo Salazar Bahena, a man they said was convicted of murder in 2005 and was released from Statesville Correctional Center four days ago, adding that "state officials refused to transfer him directly to ICE custody."

"Salazar was locked away in one of Illinois' maximum-security prisons for two decades for murder, but the state saw fit to release him despite the fact that he had a final order of removal from a Department of Justice immigration judge," said acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons in an emailed news release.

The Illinois Department of Corrections did not respond to the I-Team's questions about Bahena's release.

In its first release announcing the start of the Chicago operation, the Department of Homeland Security named and pictured at least half a dozen men, all allegedly from Venezuela or Mexico, next to descriptions of violent criminal convictions.

In each case, DHS said Cook County failed to honor immigration detainers, releasing these men.

But the I-team checked with the Cook County Sheriff's Office and jail, the State's Attorney's Office, and the Clerk of Court's office but couldn't turn up a single record of any conviction connected to these names listed.

DHS has yet to respond to repeated I-Team questions and requests for additional details.

Now state leaders say even they aren't getting specific answers on who is being arrested, or when Operation Midway Blitz will end.

"This is crazy," Rep. Underwood told the I-Team on Tuesday. "They said that they have not been given an end date, and they do not expect to receive an end date internally, that that direction would come to the Director of ICE from the Trump Administration."

Underwood said she was told by ICE officials in that briefing that Operation Midway Blitz will include all of Illinois and Lake County, Indiana, and she's encouraging family and friends of those detained to contact their lawmakers.

The Department of Homeland Security says people who are arrested will be held in Indiana and Wisconsin.

Morales-Coix says her family is now struggling to get any information on where Jose Morales is at this point.

"It's sad to be living in the world we live in today, and especially to the people that we're really close to it," Morales-Coix told the I-Team. "This is just, you know, a family friend... But what about those people that are getting, you know, picked up by ICE who are fathers? Who are mothers? It's hard. It's really hard."