In September, when the Department of Homeland Security launched its “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, officials said the push was in honor of Katie Abraham, a 20-year-old Illinois resident who was killed at the beginning of the year in a car wreck involving an undocumented immigrant.
Now, Abraham’s mother is speaking out against the Trump administration, disavowing the operation that was launched in her daughter’s name.
“I have not spoken out since it began, but as Katie’s mother, I can no longer stay silent,” Denise Lorence wrote in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday. “The Department of Homeland Security said its immigration enforcement operation in Chicago is named in Katie’s honor. But Katie would not have wanted this.”
Lorence added that it was “unbearable” to see Abraham’s name become a “political pawn,” given that her daughter was not a political person and loved and felt safe in Chicago, a city the Trump administration has painted as a war zone needing emergency federal intervention.
“Katie would not want to be associated with an operation in which kids witness their parents being taken into custody on their way to or from school,” the op-ed continues. “She wouldn’t support scaring kids with the use of military efforts in their neighborhoods or in their apartment buildings.”
Reached for comment, the Department of Homeland Security attached a statement from Joe Abraham, the late 20-year-old’s father.
“DHS launched Operation Midway Blitz in honor of my daughter, Katie Abraham, who was killed in Illinois by a criminal illegal alien drunk driver who should have never been in our country,” the statement reads.
“Sanctuary policies helped kill Katie,” Abraham added. “As compassionate as she was, Katie would not sacrifice other people’s lives just for the sake of bringing in illegals. I gave my permission to conduct Operation Midway Blitz in Katie’s honor, and I stand by it.”
Prior to Operation Midway Blitz, Joe Abraham and Katie Abraham’s step mother have appeared in a video for Homeland Security and at the White House with Donald Trump.
“Katie received no due process,” the father said in an August DHS video clip, a reference to criticisms the Trump administration has been arresting and summarily deporting immigrants with no due process. “I know they like to use certain terms like disappeared, taken, snatched, but let me tell you, Katie was disappeared, taken, snatched, and received no due process at all. The difference here is Katie was disappeared from us forever.”
Katie Abraham and a friend were killed in a January hit-and-run car accident in Urbana by a drunk man police say was an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant.
As part of Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration has surged federal immigration officers to the Chicago area, about 150 miles away from Urbana, an effort the White House has tried to bolster by attempting to send National Guard troops into the city.
The operation has resulted in more than 1,500 arrests across the region since it began in September.
The effort has also been met with fierce protests and condemnation from local officials, and ICE agents are accused of carrying out abuses, including a commando-style raid on an apartment building where observers claim agents broke down doors and nearly-naked children were zip-tied, separated from their parents, and detained for hours.
A federal judge earlier this month restrained immigration officers from using riot control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists.
The first and second Trump administration have both shared the stories of what they called “Angel Families,” those who lost loved ones in crimes involving undocumented immigrations, as part of efforts to justify their immigration priorities.
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