Thousands arrested, deported by immigration agents during Operation Midway Blitz, new records reveal

CHICAGO (WLS) -- For the first time, the public is seeing a full picture of the number of people apprehended in the Chicago-area by federal immigration agents during the enforcement surge last fall.

Government data released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit documents thousands of people taken into custody and quickly deported; one person as young as two-years-old.

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It was a tense time last fall when federal officers were swarming Chicago streets. The enhanced enforcement was codenamed "Operation Midway Blitz".

In communities across the city and suburbs, federal agents working on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent shockwaves through the community by making hundreds of arrests, and the ABC7 I-Team is now learning how many people were caught up in the Trump Administration's dragnet.

At the start of President Donald Trump's second term, there were steady numbers of arrests by immigration authorities in Illinois, ranging from 150 to 300 arrests monthly.

But when Operation Midway Blitz started in September, apprehensions climbed to more than 760 people in September, then 2,074 people in October and dropping to 811 people in November.

While the number of federal agents deployed in the Chicago region dropped after November, hundreds of arrests have still occurred each month into 2026.

The I-Team's analysis found there were more immigration apprehensions in Illinois during Midway Blitz than in the years 2023 and 2024 combined, with more than 90 percent of those detained concentrated in and around Chicago.

The government data analyzed by the I-Team was provided to a group of researchers calling themselves the Deportation Data Project after the group filed a lawsuit over an ignored FOIA request submitted to ICE.

President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) repeatedly told the public these enforcement operations were to find and remove the "worst of the worst."

According to the newly released data, 58% of those apprehended last fall had no criminal history whatsoever, while 23% had pending misdemeanor or felony charges, and 18% had prior misdemeanor or felony convictions.

The data shows more than half of the people detained by federal immigration agents have already been deported.

Last week, the I-Team shared the story of one man named Victor who was arrested and deported to Honduras, who is now back home in Chicago after filing a petition in federal court seeking due process.

"It was a terrible feeling," Victor said, not knowing whether he would see his wife or American-born children again. "It was very anguishing."

Victor is among the few who've come back, but more than 2,400 people have already been deported. More than half of those people had no criminal history, the data shows.

The I-Team is also learning for the first time how many children were apprehended by agents during this time frame: 162 people under the age of 18 were arrested in Illinois since the Blitz began.

The youngest was two years old, and "voluntarily left" the country, according to the ICE records.