When the Department of Homeland Security unleashed hundreds of troops to crack down on immigrant communities in Chicago in September, it claimed “Operation Midway Blitz” would honor the memory of Katie Abraham, a 22-year-old college student from Illinois who was killed in a hit-in-run crash in 2025 by an undocumented man. On Monday, however, her mother testified to a state commission that her daughter would have “hated” being promotional material for the government’s anti-immigrant agenda.
“Having my daughter’s name used this way, it added a level of despair I didn’t even know could exist,” Denise Lorence, Abraham’s mother, said. “They preyed on vulnerable communities…and they preyed on Katie, who had no say in the matter.”
Mother of Katie Abraham, whose name the Trump administration used to justify Operation Midway Blitz, criticizes the deployment of ICE in Chicago:
“I learned the Trump administration was using my daughter’s name for their political agenda when friends reached out after seeing it… pic.twitter.com/pMdHDidDHN
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) April 28, 2026
Lorence’s testimony came as part of a two-day hearing by the Illinois Accountability Commission, which was created in October by Gov. JB Pritzker (D) to track the “public record of abuses” by the administration during Operation Midway Blitz. And, well, here’s just a few off the top of our head: in October, Greg Bovino, the guy in charge, was caught on camera pelting tear gas canisters at protesters; in November, border goons pepper-sprayed a one-year-old; and, somewhere during all that, a woman named Marimar Martinez claimed one of Bovino’s goons told her, “Do something, bitch,” before non-fatally shooting her five times. (At the time, DHS claimed that she drove at them, a case that later fell apart in court.) The commission reportedly plans to issue a final report by Thursday.
Operation Midway Blitz netted about 3,800 detentions and 2,500 deportations—and per data released last month, most of the people who were detained or deported had no criminal record.
This is also not the first time the GOP has exploited a dead woman to achieve its fascist, anti-immigrant policies. In January 2025, Congress passed the Laken Riley Act, which was named after a 22-year-old student who was killed in 2024, by a noncitizen man who was previously charged with shoplifting. At the time, Stephanie Love-Patterson of the National Network to End Domestic Violence told Jezebel the legislation could “embolden abusers” and “represent a step backwards for survivors.” According to DHS numbers released earlier this year, more than 21,000 individuals have been arrested under the policy.
Speaking in a public hearing on Tuesday, the accountability commission’s vice chair, Patricia Brown Holmes, said federal agents “used military-style tactics to sow chaos and fear.” “This is how the Trump administration weaponized immigration enforcement to terrorize Chicago and its residents,” she said. In response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called Pritzker a “total slob who would rather dream up political stunts for his doomed-to-fail Presidential campaign than actually help Illinois residents.” Hm. That descriptor sounds familiar… but it isn’t what I’d use for Pritzker.
