ICE Launches Operation Midway Blitz To Protect Chicago

A lot of things about Jan. 19, 2025 haunt Joe Abraham’s dreams. But one fact in particular about the way in which his 20-year-old daughter, Katie, was senselessly killed that day in a hit-and run crash keeps him up at night. 

“They didn’t just kill Katie. They killed Katie’s kids, Katie’s kids’ kids. Her legacy is no longer there. She has been stopped,” Abraham, of Glenview, Ill., told The Federalist in an interview Monday evening. 

“You just can’t get past that,” the grieving father added. “Not only did she get a death sentence and we all got a life sentence, but her whole chain has been broken. And the silence [from Illinois government] is killing my ears.” 

On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) smashed the silence in the name of Katie Abraham. 

‘In Honor of Katie’

The Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Midway Blitz in lawless Illinois, targeting “the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor [J.B.] Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets,” according to a DHS press release. 

As The Federalist reported, Katie Abraham was pronounced dead at the scene of the January hit-and-run car crash near the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana. A friend, 21-year-old Chloe Polzin, died from her injuries later at the hospital. 

The killer, according to police, was a previously deported illegal alien who was allegedly drunk when he slammed his SUV into the driver’s side of the vehicle Katie’s friend was driving as it was stopped at a red light. Julio Cucul-Bol, a 29-year-old Guatemalan national, was driving 78 miles per hour when his vehicle collided with the Honda Civic, Champaign State’s Attorney Julia Rietz said at the suspect’s arraignment earlier this year.

Rietz said Cucul-Bol applied the brakes about a half a second before the collision, and that he made “little to no attempt to steer out of the way” of the car filled with four college-aged students. Cucul-Bol immediately fled the scene. When U.S. Marshals ultimately apprehended him days later, he was about an hour south of Dallas, Texas, en route to the U.S. southern border, according to federal law enforcement officials. He had been using falsified identification papers, authorities said.

“DHS is launching Operation Midway Blitz in honor of Katie Abraham who was killed in Illinois by a criminal illegal alien who should have never been in our country,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the press release. “This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.”  

‘This Isn’t About Fighting Crime’

The latest ICE law enforcement effort in Chicago, not surprisingly, met defiance and scorn from Illinois’ “sanctuary” leftist governor and Chicago’s “sanctuary” leftist mayor. 

“Chicago doesn’t want to see reckless, unconstitutional, militarized immigration enforcement in our city,” very unpopular Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday on X.

Chicago, a fortress of corrupt Democrat politics, apparently doesn’t want to see the feckless Democrat Johnson holding the reins of power. The mayor’s approval ratings in some polls this year dipped into single digits. Nearly 80 percent of Chicagoans held an unfavorable opinion of the leftist mayor, and their driving concern was the Windy City’s crippling crime rate, according to an Illinois Policy Institute poll from February.

Pritzker, who also is dealing with polling problems as he flirts with a presidential run, once again shook his hefty fist at the Trump administration’s attempt to clean up a crime problem the rotund governor and fellow soft-on-crime Democrats have fueled. In an X post, Pritzker decried the ICE operation as a scary Trump tactic. 

“Once again, this isn’t about fighting crime. That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,” he wrote. “Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump Administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisians.”

‘It Has Driven Me Crazy’

But gerrymandered Illinois and its governor have been caught up in the Democrat “resistance” movement against the president and their national quest for a return to power and relevancy. They have no intention of really working with the Trump administration to deal with violent crimes, particularly crimes committed by illegal aliens. 

Take, for instance, Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, a 52-year-old illegal alien from Mexico. He was charged in April with “concealing the body of a missing woman in a storage container on his yard for two months, abusing her corpse, and obstruction of justice,” according to DHS.

Waukegan, Ill., police, found the 37-year-old victim, Megan Bos, shoved into a bleach storage container, according to law enforcement agents. DHS reported that Lake County Judge Randie Bruno released Mendoza-Gonzalez after his court appearance, “where he was immediately allowed to freely roam the Chicago streets.”

ICE arrested the illegal alien in July. 

“It has driven me crazy every single day to think that he’s been out there,” Jennifer Bos, Megan Bos’ mother, told Eyewitness 7 News in Chicago. “…I don’t know what’s gonna happen now, but I do know he wasn’t sleeping in his bed last night.”

“For years, Governor Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets—putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” McLaughlin said in the press release on Operation Midway Blitz. “President Trump and Secretary Noem have a clear message: no city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.” 

‘No One Else Should Be Killed Senselessly’

While Pritzker and crew stand up for foreign lawbreakers, Abraham said they have turned their backs on victims. He said the governor has yet to reach out to him and his family.

Abraham said he doesn’t need an apology. He believes it would be meaningless and insincere. But he would like an acknowledgement that things have gotten out of control with so-called sanctuary and social justice policies and that Pritzker will do what he can to get Illinois on the right track. 

Abraham said his daughter would be proud that her name is tied to an effort to help save lives: “She was such a gentle-natured soul. I think it would break her heart not to stand up and say that no one else should be killed senselessly.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.