CHICAGO — Three decades after she came to the U.S., on Tuesday 53-year-old Maricela Rosales Castillo put her hair in a ponytail, grabbed her favorite blue sweater and backpack, and left her home in Berwyn, Illinois, to head to a market for groceries. She was planning to make albóndigas, a meatball stew, for her children that day.
She didn’t make it far.
Just steps away from her house, she was intercepted by a group of Border Patrol agents armed and wearing dark masks. These agents, whose primary mandate is to secure the national borders, are now patrolling Chicago suburbs.
It’s part of Operation Midway Blitz, a campaign the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched Sept. 8 saying it would target “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” in the area.
But the government’s own data and detentions like that of Rosales — a mother of three who has no apparent criminal record — cast serious doubt on whether that’s really the mission.
On Oct. 3, DHS announced that since the operation began in September, more than 1,000 undocumented migrants had been arrested across Chicago and its suburbs — “including the worst of the worst pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers.” However, the agency provided detailed information for only 10 men with a criminal background, about 1% of those detained, making independent verification difficult.
In one particularly jarring raid, on Sept. 30 federal agents with Black Hawk helicopters and military-type vehicles descended on an apartment complex in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. DHS said the location was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members,” a Venezuelan criminal gang targeted by the Trump administration.
According to DHS, 37 people were arrested during the operation; however, only eight of them were confirmed to have a criminal record — and that includes crimes ranging from aggravated battery to retail theft. The agency did not say whether any of those cases resulted in convictions.
Just one “verified” Tren de Aragua member and one U.S. citizen with an active warrant were among the 37, DHS said, without saying how it had verified that gang affiliation. Others taken that day, the agency said, were “illegal aliens.”
In other words, while the administration says it is disrupting transnational gang activity, the bulk of those detained seem to have no serious record. In fact, federal data shows that over 70% of detainees who were being held as of last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement nationally had no criminal convictions.
One of Rosales’ daughters, Samantha Rojas Rosales, only learned about her mother’s detention after watching a video obtained by MSNBC. “That’s her,” she said. “She always wears that blue sweater.”
In tears, Rojas said these immigration operations ostensibly aimed at gangsters are tearing families apart. Her mother came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1995, she said.
“She has worked hard. She has paid her taxes. She’s done everything possible to make sure she isn’t a problem here,” the 21-year-old daughter said. “And she has raised me here my entire life.”
Asked about the arrest, a Homeland Security official focused on what Rosales did 30 years ago: “Rosales Castillo admitted to being illegally present in the U.S. to Border Patrol officers which is a crime,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told MSNBC in an email.
Grabbed up while grabbing coffee
The same morning Rosales was arrested, just blocks away in Cicero — an area with the highest concentration of Latinos in the state — another immigration operation unfolded. Two mechanics, Mario Martínez Serrano and Daniel Cabrera García, were standing outside a bakery drinking coffee when unmarked vehicles and Border Patrol agents surrounded them.
Surveillance footage obtained by MSNBC shows Border Patrol agents chasing the men inside the bakery. Cabrera was violently thrown to the ground, three witnesses said. Both men were taken away in an unmarked vehicle.
Rosie Rodríguez, who has an insurance agency next door to the bakery and witnessed the arrests, told MSNBC that immigration agents are snatching away “good people.”
“They’re my clients. These are hardworking men. These are not criminals,” she said.
DHS disagrees.
Martínez is a “criminal illegal alien with an extensive criminal history, including arrests for battery, DUI, domestic abuse, possession of a controlled substance, and two prior removals from the U.S.,” McLaughlin told MSNBC.








