The Department of Homeland Security is using footage of a “harmful and traumatic” ICE raid that reportedly saw kids dragged naked from their homes and thrown into rental vans for its latest promo video.
The DHS pushed out a dark, cinematic montage—featuring helmet cams, door rams, and burly masked agents stacked in stairwells—boasting “OVER 900 ARRESTS during Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago.
According to brutal eyewitness accounts, residents had their doors smashed down and homes trashed, before some were held outside in handcuffs for hours, and others were thrown into Budget rental vans.
The caption, posted on the agency’s official account, warned, “To every criminal illegal alien: Darkness is no longer your ally. We will find you.”
What the video fails to mention is that, during the raid on a South Shore apartment tower hours earlier, its officers were accused of manhandling kids and seniors, some of them U.S. citizens.
Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street, told the Chicago Sun-Times she saw “kids coming out buck naked” as dozens of armed agents dragged residents—including children—out of units and into the rented vehicles.
“Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible,” she said. “It was heartbreaking to watch.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council blasted DHS for the promo. “In this raid, they dragged naked children out of their homes and put them into [rental] vans. And now they’re bragging about it,” he wrote on X.
U.S citizen Rodrick Johnson, 67, said agents smashed through his door and dragged him out. Johnson said he was left bound in zip ties outside his home for around three hours before being let go.
“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Johnson told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
Brandon Lee, a spokesman for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, described the raid as “a violent show of force in the middle of the night.
He told the outlet: “Taking families out of an apartment building in a residential neighborhood like that is harmful, is traumatic, and that is not something that people can easily recover from, whether they themselves were taken or whether they witnessed it.”
The raid ranks among the biggest since the Trump administration rolled out “Operation Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, flooding the Chicago area with federal immigration officers to conduct arrests and raids.
DHS said a joint team—Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF—took 37 people into custody in the sweep, describing some as suspected drug traffickers, gun offenders, and immigration violators.
The agency also branded South Shore “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no proof and did not say whether any arrestees belonged to the Venezuelan gang.
Alleged Tren de Aragua members have been charged and held in Chicago as recently as August, yet the Chicago Sun-Times has said it had found scant evidence linking the group to violence in the city.
Federal officials say the broader blitz across the Chicago area has resulted in hundreds more detentions, although the exact number claimed by DHS has not been verified.
The Daily Beast has long chronicled DHS’ appetite for glossy yet controversial PR stunts
Last week, the agency leaned into gamer bait, creating a Pokémon-themed video of raids, without permission from The Pokémon Company.
One of the clips it used was from a bungled raid at which DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—nicknamed ICE Barbie for taking part in PR stunts in military fatigues and full make-up—was present.
That raid also saw U.S citizens wrongfully arrested, and legal experts said Noem’s hands-on role could make her a subpoena magnet if the episode becomes evidence in court.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS for comment.
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