The Trump administration’s slick movies of an immigration raid at a Chicago condominium constructing confirmed federal brokers rappelling from a helicopter, banging down doorways and marching out tan-skinned males whose fingers have been zip-tied behind their backs.
It was a made-for-TV spectacle, captured by a cable information crew that had been invited to accompany the brokers. Footage of the September raid went viral on social media, and nationwide and native information shops reported on what occurred. However one factor has been lacking from practically the entire protection: the voices of the immigrants who have been taken away in the midst of the night time and whose names have been by no means launched.
I’m a reporter in ProPublica’s Chicago workplace, and I write about immigration. I’ve expertise monitoring down family members of Venezuelans caught up in Trump’s immigration dragnet. This yr, I labored with colleagues to report on one other group of Venezuelans that the Trump administration had claimed have been gang members and expelled to a jail in El Salvador.
So when my editors assembled a group to report on the raid, I knew how I wished to contribute: discovering the immigrants and telling their tales. Ultimately, I spoke with a dozen Venezuelan women and men who have been detained in one of the dramatic federal raids to happen inside a U.S. metropolis in latest historical past.
Norelly Eugenia Mejías Cáceres, 37, informed me she collapsed and handed out in a hallway as closely armed brokers took away her husband and her barefoot 6-year-old son.
Johandry José Andrade Jiménez, 23, mentioned his three little ladies — all in diapers — wailed when brokers threw him towards the ground.
Naudelys Yeyes, 20, mentioned she pleaded with brokers to cease hitting a Venezuelan man she knew. “There are kids right here,” she informed the brokers repeatedly, anxious about her 4-year-old son who was watching.
Trump officers have mentioned they’d intelligence that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the constructing, and that there have been weapons, explosives and medicines inside. After the raid, they mentioned they’d detained two gang members.
However the administration refused to determine the immigrants they detained or present proof about any of its claims. My colleagues Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, Mariam Elba and I got down to decide what truly occurred.
Regardless of the high-profile nature of the raid, federal prosecutors haven’t filed legal expenses towards any of the immigrants detained that night time. A spokesperson for the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety didn’t reply to our questions however despatched us an announcement about how the raid was “carried out in full compliance of the regulation.” You’ll be able to learn the complete assertion right here.
I encourage you to learn our investigation. However I wish to inform you slightly extra concerning the Venezuelan women and men we spoke to, how we discovered them, what they went by and the way completely different their profiles are from these alleged by the federal government.
To attempt to discover them, I spent hours watching Spanish-language movies concerning the raid on TikTok and Fb, and studying tons of of feedback underneath the posts. Just a few of the feedback gave the impression to be written by family members and associates of the detained immigrants. I reached out to them and a few agreed to speak.
From these interviews, I realized that the federal government had despatched a few of the Venezuelan males, girls and kids to jails in Kentucky, Indiana and Texas. Others had already been deported. Some moms had been launched with their kids — together with infants born within the U.S. All have been indignant and confused about what had occurred. Their lives had been torn aside. Households have been separated. Asylum-seekers have been returned to a rustic with an authoritarian authorities and a collapsed financial system that they’d as soon as fled.
As we realized the immigrants’ names, we tried to seek out out in the event that they have been nonetheless in federal custody. We wrote letters to them in jail and requested for interviews. Then they began to name us.
Jonahyker Francisco López Manzano, 23, mentioned he entered the U.S. in early 2024. He crossed the border illegally and surrendered to immigration authorities searching for refuge. He was processed and launched to pursue an asylum declare. In Chicago, he labored principally development jobs he discovered by ready in a Dwelling Depot parking zone.
The night time of the raid, he awoke to the sound of a helicopter over the five-story condominium constructing and brokers yelling, “Open the door!” López mentioned he sat on the sting of his mattress, wishing that his personal door would turn into invisible. However the door got here down and brokers burst in. He mentioned they dragged him to his knees and zip-tied his fingers behind his again. They marched him exterior because the cameras rolled. His head was down and his lengthy, raveled hair hung over his face.
The brokers didn’t ask him any questions or clarify why they have been there, López mentioned. “They didn’t say something,” he mentioned from the Kentucky jail the place he was detained. “I haven’t performed something improper.”
José David Saavedra Pérez, 22, hid underneath his mattress the night time of the raid. Within the movies launched by DHS, Saavedra is shirtless, his condominium quantity scrawled in black marker throughout his chest. Two masked brokers are holding his arms and marching him exterior.
We realized from his lawyer that Saavedra left his condominium earlier than daybreak every morning and rode buses and trains to a suburban Dwelling Depot parking zone to search for development work. His dedication so impressed a contractor who commonly employed him that, when the contractor realized that Saavedra had been detained within the raid, he helped discover him a professional bono lawyer.
A lot of the detained immigrants we spoke to didn’t have attorneys, although. They couldn’t afford to rent one. That was the case for Jean Carlos Antonio Colmenares Pérez, a 39-year-old development employee who was a former paratrooper within the Venezuelan military.
At an immigration court docket listening to in mid-October, Colmenares informed the decide he’d been sick with a fever and begged to be despatched again to Venezuela. “I wish to return to my nation now,” he mentioned. “I don’t need any extra hearings.”
The decide couldn’t order his deportation that day, as his case was being transferred to a different immigration court docket. Because the weeks ticked by, he and different males known as from jail and informed me they have been in despair. Like Colmenares, some have been getting sick. Others mentioned they felt like they have been mentally unravelling.
Greater than a dozen kids have been taken out of the condominium constructing that night time. Colmenares informed me he anxious about his 6-year-old nephew, who clung to his legs when brokers knocked down the door. The little boy was a primary grader on the elementary faculty throughout the road from the constructing.
I realized that the boy’s father, Colmenares’ cousin, was detained at one other jail in Kentucky. In the meantime, the boy and his mom, Norelly Eugenia Mejías Cáceres, have been despatched to a household detention facility in Texas.
They spent a month in detention earlier than she gave up on her asylum case and requested to be despatched again to Venezuela. Mejías later informed me her son cried for his father and refused to eat the meals served in jail. He misplaced weight. She mentioned that different girls who have been incarcerated with them purchased the boy ramen noodles from the commissary so he wouldn’t go hungry.
Mejías mentioned she returned to Venezuela with even lower than what her household had once they had left. Her son’s toys, garments, footwear and pill. The inexperienced backpack with $600 in financial savings. The used SUV her husband had purchased to get to work. All of it was gone.
“I don’t know why they did this,” she mentioned. It was a phrase she repeated a number of occasions.
Final week I met Yelianny Nicoll Primera Herreras, one other mom who was detained the night time of the raid. Her three little ladies, all underneath the age of 4, have been in diapers when brokers burst in. The ladies’ father, Andrade, informed me how his daughters wailed when brokers pushed him to the ground.
Primera and her chubby-cheeked daughters are staying in a homeless shelter. Once we met — on the day of an early Chicago blizzard — none of them had winter coats. The ladies stayed inside with me, watching “KPop Demon Hunters” on my cellphone whereas Primera stepped exterior to get the {photograph} you see on the prime of this text taken.
Primera, 20, mentioned she hardly ever leaves the shelter, afraid of getting detained once more. As she was on the night time of the raid, she is terrified that she can be separated from her daughters and deported with out them.
“I keep right here, locked up with my daughters as a result of all of these immigration brokers are exterior,” she informed me.
When Andrade calls her from detention, a knot kinds behind her throat. She mentioned she desires to elevate his spirits and assures him that all the pieces is okay. Primera pressured a smile as she informed me this, however her eyes have been shiny with tears.
She mentioned federal officers have given her time to get her daughters’ beginning certificates and passports to allow them to be returned to Venezuela collectively. Her two youngest daughters are U.S. residents, and Primera mentioned she is afraid to return.
“I wish to keep,” she mentioned. “For my daughters’ future.”
