Accountability panel to urge criminal charges for federal agent misconduct during Operation Midway Blitz

The chair of an accountability panel examining the impact of Operation Midway Blitz called on Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke to prosecute federal immigration agents for misconduct.

Judge Rubén Castillo, chair of the Illinois Accountability Commission, made the call to action during his closing remarks at the commission's final hearing Tuesday. The commission was tasked with scrutinizing the tactics used last fall during President Donald Trump's deportation campaign.

A final report from the panel is scheduled to publish Thursday and will include specific recommendations for local and state officials, Castillo said.

"Our report is going to make very specific and detailed recommendations aimed at strengthening accountability and preventing the reoccurrence of the community devastation that has occurred in Illinois and in other communities such as Minneapolis," Castillo said. "This report needs to be evaluated by other states and by public officials in this state who can take appropriate action, starting with the Cook County State's Attorney, who will be referred cases for criminal prosecution."

Castillo, a former U.S. district chief judge, is among the coalition calling for a special prosecutor to investigate federal agents.

He also went further Tuesday and said members of the Trump administration should be held accountable, including senior advisor Stephen Miller, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who oversaw Operation Midway Blitz and similar campaigns in other cities.

"Now it's really going to be up to us to go after some of these senior officials who put these field operations into place," Castillo said. "They put them in intentionally, and we need to go after them just as intentionally."

Thursday's report also will name specific federal agents the commission alleges broke the law. One of those agents is Charles Exum, the Border Patrol agent who shot Marimar Martinez five times after a car with three CBP agents collided with her vehicle on Oct. 4 near 39th Street and Kedzie Avenue in Brighton Park.

Martinez and her attorney Christopher Parente testified before the commission on Tuesday about the shooting and its aftermath. Martinez has previously testified before Congress. Following the shooting, federal prosecutors charged Martinez, but later dropped the case against her.

The commission reviewed the body camera footage and surveillance video from the day she was shot and court records tied to the dropped criminal case.

"The commission has determined reasonable cause to believe that agent Charles Exum shot an unarmed civilian without justification," said commissioner Jimmy Arce. "This is an extraordinary and profoundly alarming pattern of events — not procedural lapses or technical errors, but consistent, intentional violations of the law."

Tuesday's hearing included pre-taped testimony from an anonymous person who saw the shooting. The person, who the commission said was an independent observer, said the agents were not under attack or threatened by Martinez but shot her anyway.

Sun-Times staff

After Martinez was shot, community members gathered in protest near the site of the shooting. In response, federal agents deployed 15 rounds of tear gas and pepper spray into the crowd, the largest deployment of chemical weapons in Chicago in 60 years, according to the commission.

The hearing also delved into another major incident during Operation Midway Blitz in the East Side neighborhood and the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas González last September in Franklin Park.

Those incidents and the ones examined during Monday’s hearing were "unprecedented" displays of brutality and showed "repeated failures of accountability," Castillo said.

"We have developed as a commission a very substantial evidentiary record. In my 25 years as a federal judge, I've never seen the type of brutality shown by the agents involved in Midway Blitz," Castillo said. "We can only hope and pray that the changes we suggest are implemented so that this conduct is never to occur again on American soil."