‘A crisis for the nation’: ICE accountability commission continues to seek solutions

CHICAGO — A state commission dedicated to documenting misconduct by federal immigration agents and making policy recommendations issued its initial report Friday, while also adopting a new direction to look at high-ranking White House officials.

The Illinois Accountability Commission, created through executive order by Gov. JB Pritzker in October, has spent recent months reviewing actions of federal agents stationed in the Chicagoland area during President Donald Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration enforcement campaign, including public testimony provided at its first open hearing in mid-December.

Ahead of the commission’s second public hearing Friday, Pritzker asked the commission to expand its review to include major Trump officials, including the now-ousted Customs and Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino, White House “border czar” Tom Homan, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.

“For too long, Gregory Bovino and his rogue federal agents have terrorized communities in Illinois and across the country, violated our people’s constitutional rights, and unleashed violence at every turn,” Pritzker said. “Bovino packing his bags cannot detract from our mission (of) accountability.”

In addition to eight named officials, Pritzker’s request applied to additional “deputies, subordinates and officials across the Trump hierarchy who may have played a role in the federal deployments.”

The commission agreed to take up that mandate, with Commission Chair and former U.S. District Court Judge Rubén Castillo signaling that the commission may recommend disciplinary action or prosecution related to the shootings of Silverio Villegas González, a father of two killed by ICE agents in Franklin Park in September and of teaching assistant Marimar Martinez, shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in October.

“Just imagine if agents who shot Mr. Villegas González back on Sept. 12 had been publicly disciplined. Imagine a world where that had happened, maybe, just maybe, the Minnesota shootings would not have occurred and two people would be alive who are now dead,” Castillo said, referencing the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

The commission’s report also states that it “is seeking to make referrals for criminal or civil prosecution for misconduct by federal immigration agents.”

Erosion of legitimacy

The three-hour hearing in downtown Chicago featured testimony from professors, legal scholars, historians, journalists and law enforcement professionals.

University of Chicago Professor of Political Science Robert Pape focused on the public’s perception of Operation Midway Blitz and the ongoing immigration enforcement campaign in Minnesota.

The Trump administration’s denial of visible facts, like the claim that Alex Pretti was holding a gun in his hand and approached agents with the intent to “massacre them,” undermines the government’s legitimacy, Pape said.

“Democracies don’t fail when laws are enforced,” Pape said. “They fail when enforcement loses legitimacy and people stop believing restraint will protect them. That is why Minneapolis is a crisis for the nation.”

But that crisis, he said, did not start in Minnesota. Pape pointed to DHS’s characterization of Martinez, the Chicago woman shot in October, as a “domestic terrorist.” The administration ultimately dropped its charges against Martinez after it was revealed that the agent who shot her had bragged over text about the shooting.

Martinez’ lawyer has recently sought to have video footage from her case released, as he said it contradicts the administration’s claim that she had prevented the agents from passing by. The evidence from her case remains under a protective order that prevents its release, which her legal team says has allowed DHS to control the narrative without evidence.

If people do not trust the government to tell them the truth and to use its force to protect them, they will resist, Pape argued. Immigration enforcement officers’ reliance on face masks and coverings also deteriorates that legitimacy, he said.

“The mask, of course, is building a perception that the state doesn’t want to be truthful about its use of force,” Pape said.

That contributed to a perception by over half of Chicago residents that Operation Midway Blitz was about exerting political control, rather than a legitimate immigration enforcement campaign, according to a study conducted by the University of Chicago.

Historical, new abuses

Garrett Graff, an author, journalist and historian who has documented the evolution of ICE and CBP for over two decades, outlined a long history of abuses and misconduct inside the organizations.

Nearly 5,000 Border Patrol agents have been arrested since 2005, some of them multiple times a year, said Graff, a former editor at Politico.

“The population of CBP agents and officers who have been arrested would make it roughly the nation’s fourth largest police department, equal in size to the entire Philadelphia police,” Graff told the commission. “It appears that the crime rate of CBP agents and officers was higher per capita (for much of the 2010s) than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States.”

That has gotten worse and will continue, Graff said, with the ballooning of funding for ICE under the so-called One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress last year. The bill gave ICE $75 billion to spend over four years, in addition to its annual budget of $10 billion.

For years, the ICE budget was expected to support around 400,000 deportations annually, or 3,000 a day. But in April 2025, the administration set a new goal: to deport one million people per year. That new quota has required the administration to hire a lot of people quickly.

The once required five-month training for agents has been shortened to six-weeks, according to Graff. ICE recruits have been hired without background checks or meeting the department’s own standards, according to NBC News.

“In any other foreign country, if a U.S. reporter was writing about these raids and the occupation of Chicago or Minneapolis, we wouldn’t hesitate to call ICE or CBP a paramilitary force loyal to the regime or a masked right-wing militia,” Graff said. “As an even larger cohort of even less-qualified and less-trained ICE and CBP officers begins to hit the streets, this is almost all certainly going to get worse.”

Recommendations

The commission is tasked with issuing recommendations to the governor and the public.

Those who spoke Friday offered a number of recommendations for accountability, including that immigration agents are not masked and have clearly displayed identification, and that the geographic jurisdiction for CBP be limited to areas closer to the border, and that disciplinary action be referred local law enforcement, which would be exempt from presidential pardon.

The commission will consider these and other recommendations as it works toward issuing a final report on April 30.

Earlier this month, the commission opened a contact form for people who witnessed or experienced misconduct by federal immigration enforcement agents to submit information for review. Commissioners encouraged the public to reach out with recommendations or other information for its consideration.

For his part, Graff called on Congressional leaders to act to reverse the major influx of spending that is set to begin for ICE over the next four years.

“This doesn’t change unless we demand change,” Graff said. “The way that the funding for ICE has been allocated, it can spend that money straight through to 2029. Congress is going to have to act to turn that funding and hiring spigot off. Otherwise, this continues on autopilot for the next four years. The damage that we are doing to our country will be long lasting.”