Cinematographer and photographer Carlos Javier Ortiz had been working on a film about Chicago’s recent influx of immigrants — how these newcomers are making a home for themselves in difficult circumstances — when Operation Midway Blitz began here this fall. With hundreds of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents arriving in Chicago, detaining people, and clashing with residents, Ortiz did what any good documentarian would do: He grabbed his camera.
Ortiz managed to capture some of the deployment’s most dramatic moments: the aftermath of a raid on a South Shore apartment building, a tense confrontation between federal agents and East Side residents, clashes between protesters and officers outside the Broadview processing center. We asked Ortiz to share with us selects stills and clips, along with his impressions. The shots are breathtaking and otherworldly — images of what would once have seemed unfathomable here.
“People like myself and others I know feel like there’s a better way of doing this,” Ortiz says of the crackdown. “It’s almost cruel on purpose.” But Ortiz, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Chicago, is heartened by the response from people across the city. “They’re out protesting. They’re organizing communally. Chicago gets this reputation of the most segregated city, so it’s amazing seeing other Chicagoans standing up.”
On October 14, a Border Patrol vehicle collided with a car it was pursuing in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood, leading to a tense standoff between federal agents and residents. Says Ortiz: “Somebody threw an egg, and I think someone threw rocks. Then federal agents deployed tear gas. I’ve worked in countries like Israel and in Central America. I’ve seen conflict. I never imagined tear gas would be deployed by federal agents on people anywhere in Chicago.”Once it became known that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in west suburban Broadview was being used as a detention center, protesters began gathering there routinely. Says Ortiz: “Broadview has become the place to stand up and react to the action that’s taking place. This night the Border Patrol and ICE agents came out and dispersed the crowd. It was heavy. They told people to ‘move, move, move,’ and then started shooting pepper balls and tear gas.”“East Side, the neighborhood where this happened, is where all these factories, steel mills existed. European workers worked the mills, then Latinos, mostly Mexicans, worked the mills and raised their families there. I live not far from there, so when I saw on social media it was happening, I hopped on it.”
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“The East Side crowd was yelling at the agents, ‘ICE go home, ICE go home’ — that type of thing. The anger was so real. They were saying to the Latino agents, ‘How can you do this? You’re one of us.’ What I’m seeing in every neighborhood is that everybody’s becoming an activist. Because they have to.”“Somebody had thrown a tear gas canister back at the agents in East Side. That’s what they’re reacting to here. They’re shooting rubber bullets.”
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“This is the aftermath from the night federal agents were pushing people from out of the front gates in Broadview. It was chaotic. I had a mask on, but you could still feel the burning tear gas. My skin and my face were irritated.”
