A sophisticated video of the Trump administration’s immigration raid on a Chicago apartment building showed federal agents rappelling from a helicopter, banging on doors, and marching in dark-skinned men with their hands tied behind their backs in zip ties.
It was a made-for-TV spectacle, filmed by a cable news crew invited to accompany the agents. Footage of the September attack went viral on social media, and national and local news outlets reported on what happened. However, there is one thing that is missing from almost all the reports. These are the voices of immigrants who were taken away in the middle of the night and whose names were never made public.
I’m a reporter in ProPublica’s Chicago office, where I write about immigration. I have experience tracking down relatives of Venezuelans caught up in President Trump’s immigration network. This year, I worked with colleagues to report on another group of Venezuelans who the Trump administration claimed were gang members and were exiled to a prison in El Salvador.
So when my editor assembled a team to report on the raid, I knew how I wanted to contribute. It’s about finding immigrants and telling their stories. Ultimately, I spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelan men and women who had been detained in one of the most dramatic federal raids inside a U.S. city in recent years.
Norelly Eugenia Mejias Cáceres, 37, said she collapsed unconscious in the hallway as heavily armed agents took away her husband and barefoot 6-year-old son.
Johandry José Andrade Jiménez, 23, said his three young daughters, all in diapers, cried as staff threw him to the floor.
Nordelis Jeyes, 20, said he begged investigators to stop beating a Venezuelan man he knew. “There are children here,” she repeatedly told the agent, worrying about her 4-year-old son who was watching over her.
Trump administration officials said they received information that the Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua had taken over the building and that there were guns, explosives and drugs inside. After the raid, two gang members were arrested.
But the administration has refused to identify the detained migrants or provide evidence of its claims. My colleagues Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, Mariam Elba and I set out to find out what really happened.
Mustafa Hussein (ProPublica) Jim Vondruska (ProPublica) Federal agents raided this apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood.
Despite the high profile of the raid, federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against the immigrants detained that night. A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to our questions, but sent us a statement about how the raid was “conducted in full compliance with the law.” You can read the full statement here.
Please read our research. But we would like to tell you a little more about the Venezuelan men and women we spoke to, how we found them, what they went through, and how their profiles differ from what the government claims.
To find them, I watched hours of Spanish-language videos about the raids on TikTok and Facebook and read hundreds of comments under the posts. Some of the comments appear to have been written by relatives or friends of detained migrants. I contacted them and some agreed to talk.
From these interviews, we learned that the government sent some Venezuelan men, women, and children to prisons in Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas. Some have already been deported. Some mothers were released with their children, including babies born in the United States. Everyone was angry and confused about what had happened. Their lives were torn apart. Families were separated. Asylum seekers have been returned to the countries they had fled, with dictatorial regimes and collapsed economies.
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Once we learned the names of the immigrants, we tried to find out if they were still in federal custody. We wrote to them in prison and asked for interviews. Then they started calling us.
Jonahiquel Francisco López Manzano, 23, said he entered the United States in early 2024. He crossed the border illegally and surrendered to immigration authorities seeking protection. He was processed and released to pursue an asylum claim. In Chicago, he worked mostly construction jobs, which he picked up while waiting in a hardware store parking lot.
On the night of the attack, he woke up to the sound of a helicopter flying over his five-story apartment building and staff yelling, “Open the door!” Lopez said she sat on the edge of her bed and hoped she couldn’t see the door. However, the door opened and staff members burst in. They reportedly dragged the man to his knees and tied his hands behind his back with zip ties. They marched him outside as the cameras rolled. Her head was bowed, her long, disheveled hair falling over her face.
Lopez said the officers did not ask him any questions or explain why they were there. “They didn’t say anything,” he said from the Kentucky prison where he was being held. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jose David Saavedra Perez, 22, hid under his bed the night of the attack. In the video released by DHS, Saavedra is shirtless, with his apartment number scrawled in black marker on his chest. Two undercover agents grab him by the arms and march him outside.
We learned from his lawyer that Mr. Saavedra would leave his apartment before dawn every morning and take a bus or train to a hardware store parking lot in the suburbs to look for construction work. His dedication so impressed a contractor who employed him regularly that, upon realizing that Saavedra had been detained in a raid, helped him find a pro bono lawyer.
However, most of the detained migrants we spoke to did not have a lawyer. They couldn’t afford to hire people. So did Jean Carlos Antonio Colmenares Pérez, a 39-year-old construction worker and former paratrooper in the Venezuelan army.
During an immigration court hearing in mid-October, Colmenares told the judge that he had become ill with a fever and begged to be sent back to Venezuela. “I want to go back to my home country right now,” he said. “I don’t want any more hearings.”
The judge could not order his deportation that day because his case had been transferred to another immigration court. After a few weeks, he and the other men called me from prison and told me they were desperate. Some, like Colmenares, fell ill. Some said they felt spiritually liberated.
That night, more than a dozen children were removed from the apartment building. Colmenares said she was worried about her 6-year-old nephew, who was clinging to his leg when workers knocked on the door. The boy was a first-grade student at the elementary school across the street from the building.
They learned that the boy’s father, Colmenares’ cousin, was being held at another prison in Kentucky. Meanwhile, the boy and his mother, Norelly Eugenia Mejias Caceres, were sent to a family detention center in Texas.
They held her for a month until she gave up her asylum claim and asked to be deported to Venezuela. Mejias later said her son cried for his father and refused to eat the food he was served in prison. he lost weight. She said other women who were incarcerated with her bought him ramen at the shop so he wouldn’t go hungry.
Mejias said his family returned to Venezuela with even less property than when they left. My son’s toys, clothes, shoes, and tablet. A green backpack that will save you $600. A used SUV that my husband bought for commuting. It was all gone.
“I don’t know why they did this,” she said. Those were the words she repeated over and over again.
Norély Eugenia Mejias Caceres and her son in a park in Venezuela after returning home. “I don’t know why they did this,” she said of the attack and its aftermath. ProPublica’s Adriana Loreiro Fernandez
Last week, I met Yerianie Nicole Primera Herreras, another mother detained on the night of the attack. Her three young daughters, all under the age of four, were in diapers when agents burst in. The girls’ father, Andrade, told me how his daughters cried when the agent pushed him to the floor.
Primera and her chubby-cheeked daughters are staying at a homeless shelter. When we met, on the first day of a Chicago snowstorm, none of them were wearing winter coats. While the girls were at home with me watching “KPop Demon Hunters” on my phone, Primera went outside to take the photo at the beginning of this article.
Primera, 20, said he rarely leaves the shelter for fear of being detained again. Because she was there the night of the attack, she fears that she will be separated from her daughters and deported without them.
“I’m here with my daughters because all the immigration officers are outside,” she told me.
When Andrade calls her from custody, a knot forms in her throat. She said she wanted to lift his spirits and assured him that everything was fine. Primera forced a smile and said that, but her eyes were shining with tears.
She said federal authorities gave her time to obtain her birth certificate and passport so she could send her daughters back to Venezuela with her. Primera’s two youngest daughters are American citizens, but she said she was afraid to return home.
“I want to stay here,” she said. “For my daughters’ future.”
