Durbin Shares Story Of Green Card Holder Who Went Missing For Two Weeks After Being Unlawfully Detained By DHS Agents During So-Called “Operation Midway Blitz”
“Donald Trump has turned federal law enforcement officers into his own personal, secret, masked police force to engage in political theater at the expense of real lives. In that process, the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, including the right to due process and the rule of law, have been trampled,” Durbin said in his speech on the Senate floor
WASHINGTON – Two months after President Trump launched his so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a speech on the Senate floor to again denounce the extreme tactics of U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they routinely and unlawfully detain residents of Illinois. In his remarks today, Durbin shared the story of Omar Huerta Cisneros, a green card holder who was detained by ICE and whose family could not locate him for two weeks after he was released.
“This coming weekend will mark two months since President Trump launched his so-called ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ in my home state of Illinois… The President is sending in ICE agents, dressed in combat uniforms with masks on their face and no identification as to who they work for, to arrest who they consider to be robbers, terrorists, murderers, rapists, and the criminally insane that have come across our border in past years. They set out to do that, but what has happened is exactly the opposite,” Durbin began. “Instead of taking dangerous people off the street, they are harassing and intimidating people who have no crimes in their background.”
“In the two months since the President started sending these [agents] in, he’s achieved what I believe his true objective was: not to bring down violent crime, but to spread fear in the hearts of our communities, especially immigrant communities,” Durbin said. “In these two months we’ve seen people thrown to the ground and beaten. This is not speculation. It is videotaped. We have it. We’ve seen children ripped from their beds in the middle of the night and zip-tied outside of an apartment complex in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. And, we have seen tear gas canisters deployed against pastors, journalists, and police.”
“Innocent people have been caught up in this terror, not just the ‘worst of the worst’ as President Trump and his team have claimed, but American citizens, legal residents, and immigrants who have built their lives and raised their families here. They pose no threat to public safety. Yet, they’re the targets of these ICE agents,” Durbin said.
Durbin then shared the story of Huerta Cisneros, a green card holder who was detained by ICE while he was walking in the southwest side of Chicago. Without the ability to contact his family or return home by himself, Huerta Cisneros, who has schizophrenia, was lost for two weeks before his family found him in Franklin Park.
“Three weeks ago, Omar Huerta Cisneros, a legal resident of the United States, a green card holder, was going for a walk in the southwest side of Chicago when masked immigration agents abruptly pulled him into a red car and drove away. Mr. Huerta Cisneros was detained and disappeared by the Trump Administration simply for walking down the street as a Hispanic man,” Durbin said. “What makes this case especially troubling though is what happened after they arrested him.”
“He’s [Huerta Cisneros] schizophrenic, and he lacks ‘the mental capacity to reach out to anybody’ according to his family. His family only learned of his arrest after footage of the encounter was posted on social media. His family started searching desperately to find him in detention,” Durbin said.
“If this sounds like an extreme case, it is not. It is the usual custom [of DHS agents during ‘Operation Midway Blitz’]. The ICE agents sweep people off the street, and they disappear, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, sometimes for even longer. There is no way to check on their whereabouts,” Durbin continued. “The ICE agents are making it all up. They are ignoring the law and the Constitution… People find only silence when they ask ‘what happened to that person that you swept up on the street?’”
“The family had to resort to pleading with the community and posting these missing person posters on social media to try to find Mr. Huerta Cisneros... They finally did find him two weeks after the masked federal agents wrongfully arrested him. Where did they find him? On the streets of a suburb of Chicago. Family members believe federal agents just dropped him off, possibly a day after detaining him. But no one contacted the family, and they didn’t know where he slept during his time away from home,” Durbin said.
Durbin concluded his remarks by underscoring the severity of federal agents’ actions that have violated the Constitution and shown blatant disregard for the right to due process.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Huerta Cisneros’s case is not isolated. Donald Trump has turned federal law enforcement officers into his own personal, secret, masked police force to engage in political theater at the expense of real lives. In that process, the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, including the right to due process and the rule of law, have been trampled,” Durbin said.
“We are on a slippery slope into authoritarianism… Listen to the President’s own words. In a ‘60 Minutes’ interview this week, he was asked about sending active-duty military into American cities. He responded, ‘I can bring in the Army, the Marines, I could bring in whoever I want,’ and that he could do so ‘in a heartbeat’ and that ‘no judge can even challenge’ him,” Durbin said.
“He also said that ICE raids ‘haven’t gone far enough.’ Tell that to Mr. Huerta Cisneros, his family, and every other Illinoisan who has caught up in these cruel and chaotic raids,” Durbin concluded his remarks.
In response to the Trump Administration’s surge in federal law enforcement in Chicago and continuous threats to deploy the military in the area, Durbin has taken a number of steps to push back on these unlawful actions carried out by DHS and Secretary Noem under the direction of President Trump. Durbin’s actions to push back on the Trump Administration’s so-called “Operation Midway Blitz” and “Operation At Large” can be found here.
Video of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Audio of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Footage of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here for TV Stations.
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