ICE Raid Where Kids Were Dragged From Their Homes Used In DHS Promo Clip

The Department of Homeland Security blasted out a hype reel for “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, thumping music, helmet cams, battering rams, and masked ICE agents flooding stairwells, bragging of “OVER 900 ARRESTS,” and warning, “Darkness is no longer your ally. We will find you.” What the video doesn’t show, residents and advocates say, is what happened hours earlier inside a South Shore high-rise, where kids and seniors were allegedly dragged into the night and loaded into rental vans, some of them U.S. citizens.

Neighbors described a siege. Doors splintered, apartments ransacked, people zip-tied on the sidewalk for hours while agents swept floor by floor. One witness told the Chicago Sun-Times she watched “kids coming out buck naked,” a scene she called “heartbreaking” as families were herded toward Budget vans. A 67-year-old U.S. citizen, Rodrick Johnson, said agents smashed his door, cuffed him outside, and kept him there while they “looked him up,” despite his questions about warrants or a lawyer. 

DHS has framed the South Shore raid as a targeted enforcement action that netted 37 people, including alleged gun offenders, drug traffickers, and immigration violators, and it has cast the neighborhood as frequented by members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang. Local reporting notes that officials offered no proof that anyone arrested was linked to the group, even as the agency leans on the label to justify the scale of the operation.

Community groups say the cost is measured in trauma, not talking points. “A violent show of force in the middle of the night,” said Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, warning that families don’t just bounce back from seeing children marched out of their homes. Immigration analyst Aaron Reichlin-Melnick blasted DHS for turning the same night into a victory montage, arguing the government is “bragging” about scenes that should have prompted soul-searching, not highlight reels.

DHS law enforcement has made OVER 900 ARRESTS during Operation Midway Blitz in Illinois.

To every criminal illegal alien: Darkness is no longer your ally. We will find you. pic.twitter.com/m9PxbuK5Ua

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 2, 2025

The promo itself, pushed on DHS’s official accounts, doubles as a scoreboard for a broader blitz the department claims has passed 900 arrests around Chicago, a number local outlets say is difficult to independently verify without detailed booking data. FOX 32 Chicago, which reviewed the video, reported that city police did not participate in the South Shore raid even as federal agents ringed the tower.

It isn’t DHS’s first foray into meme-ish messaging. Last week the agency’s Pokémon-themed content stunt drew ridicule and corporate side-eye, another example of enforcement dressed up as engagement bait.

Meanwhile, the official ICE raid ad reel keeps racking up views, even as advocates compile their own dashboards to track who was actually detained and on what grounds. 

For South Shore, it’s a lingering question that no edit can cut around, why did a midnight operation in a residential tower look and feel like a war zone, and why is the government so eager to turn it into a trailer? Until DHS answers with specifics instead of promos, the people who lived it say the only thing “over 900” describes is the number of reasons to be afraid the next time the stairwell fills with ICE agents.