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Of the 3,841 people detained during the 68-day Midway Blitz surge, 85% carried no earlier conviction, according to a Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ analysis of ICE records. That is not the same as having no record, since some faced pending charges.
- Five Latin American countries (Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia) supplied about 79% of detainees, based on the newsrooms' published country counts.
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Removal totals depend on who is counting: the Tribune documented at least 2,479 deportations, while the Sun-Times and WBEZ tally 2,732 removals, including 1,254 self-deportations.
CHICAGO — When federal agents fanned out across the Chicago area on Sept. 8, 2025, Homeland Security promised to pursue dangerous offenders. A year on, detention records tell a different story: the Sun-Times and WBEZ found that most of those held carried no earlier conviction, and that the group was drawn overwhelmingly from Latin America.
What the Records Say About Criminal Convictions
Between Sept. 8 and Nov. 14, 2025, officers booked 3,841 people. Only 15% had a conviction on file, compared with 35% in the months before the surge and 20% in the months after, according to the newsrooms' data graphic.
About six in ten detainees faced civil immigration violations alone, such as overstaying a visa. Among those without a conviction, the remainder faced a pending criminal charge, but ICE's records do not describe those charges. That is why "no conviction" is the accurate description: the data cannot show how many detainees had a clean history.
The analysis relies on ICE records that the Deportation Data Project obtained through public-records litigation. In a written statement, a DHS spokesperson sidestepped the findings, called the dataset "cherry-picked" and argued that being in the country unlawfully is what makes a person an enforcement target.
ICE's own figures point in the same direction. In an April letter to Illinois lawmakers, the agency's numbers implied that roughly 81% of those arrested lacked a conviction, the Sun-Times reported.
The Chicago Tribune measured a different thing. Its March review found that about 60% of everyone booked had no criminal history at all, and that nearly 60% of the people later deported from the surge had none either. Because the Tribune counted the absence of any record while the Sun-Times counted the absence of a conviction, the percentages are not interchangeable.
Who Was Detained: A Caseload Concentrated in Latin America
Detainees came from 92 countries, yet five Latin American nations dominated: Mexico (1,814), Venezuela (560), Guatemala (274), Ecuador (190) and Colombia (178). By our arithmetic, those five account for about 79% of the total.
The Tribune found that Mexican detainees outnumbered Venezuelans by more than three to one and that most were in their 40s or older. Among 1,797 Mexican nationals in its data, 32 had violent-felony or sex-crime convictions, while 850 had no criminal record. ICE records track nationality rather than ethnicity, so "Latin American immigrants" is the precise description.
That profile sits awkwardly beside DHS's launch pledge to go after the "worst of the worst" in Chicago.
A Wide Net: Collateral Arrests Outpaced Targeted Ones
From Sept. 8 through Nov. 14, 53% of arrests were classed as collateral and 46% as targeted, which the newsrooms read as more people picked up in the moment than sought deliberately. From mid-November through March 2026, the pattern reversed, with 72% targeted and 13% collateral.
Officers also narrowed their methods. They logged four arrest methods from September through November, versus 15 earlier in 2025, and recorded no arrests through the program that flags incarcerated immigrants nearing release, which had produced about one in ten arrests before the surge.
Fred Tsao, a lawyer with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told the newsrooms that agents saturated places where immigrants live and gather instead of approaching specific homes. He described people seized while doing yard work, driving for Uber, and selling tamales or flowers.
Little Village, Albany Park and the Human Cost
Agents made arrests in Little Village on the operation's first full day and came back in force on Oct. 22, Oct. 23 and Nov. 8. The Illinois Accountability Commission later chose those three days for a formal inquiry into what it called an occupation of the neighborhood.
Block Club Chicago followed José Luis Téllez Fernández, a father of three who, his family says, was arrested Oct. 6 while working as a landscaper. He stayed in custody for months, including weeks after immigration authorities told a judge he would be freed, and rejoined his family in February.
On the Northwest Side, Brayan Plata was detained in November during a landscaping job in Skokie. His partner, Ingrid Guanume, looked after their three young children in Albany Park during the 20 days he spent in federal custody, WBEZ reported.
Community groups absorbed part of the fallout. Luis Gutierrez, founder of Latinos Progresando, said his staff spend hours trying to learn where detained relatives are being held.
Removals and Where Enforcement Stands Now
Final outcomes are still being tallied, and the two main counts differ. The Tribune, working from data current through March 10, documented at least 2,479 deportations. The Sun-Times and WBEZ count 2,732 people from the surge who were deported or self-deported, including 1,254 who left on their own. Timing and definitions likely explain part of the gap.
Enforcement has continued at a lower volume. Federal agents took 580 people into custody across the metro area between New Year's Day and mid-March 2026, according to a WBEZ and Sun-Times review of Deportation Data Project records.
