Politics
Former ICE Spokesperson on ‘Midway Blitz,’ Detention Centers and Rebuilding Public Trust
President Donald Trump signed a $70 billion Republican-backed funding bill for immigration enforcement last week. The move means Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol will be funded through the end of Trump’s term.
It comes as many Chicago communities are still dealing with the fallout from “Operation Midway Blitz” and ongoing immigration enforcement efforts. And Democrats have raised concerns that the long-term funding takes away Congress’ oversight power.
Gail Montenegro, a former spokesperson for the INS and ICE and a former public affairs officer with the Executive Office for Immigration Review, joined “Chicago Tonight” to share her thoughts on the current state of immigration enforcement in the U.S.
In her roles with the INS, ICE and immigration courts, Montenegro conducted ridealongs with reporters as a bridge between the public and immigration enforcement officers.
She frequently worked alongside ICE agents in processing media inquiries about specific situations, describing her relationship with the agents as cordial and friendly.
What stood out to her at the time was the amount of training required for agents, including strict guidelines dedicated to judicial warrants and criminal prosecution.
Shortly after starting her role with the immigration courts, Montenegro said she worked with local organizations to coordinate schedules for court sit-ins on behalf of organizers and community stakeholders. But she said community outreach all but ended during Trump’s first term.
Montenegro accepted an early retirement offer from the Trump administration in 2025. Since then, her concerns over the agencies she represented have risen significantly.
On ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ and the state of immigration enforcement:
“It actually took place in my own neighborhood in the northern suburbs. We saw it firsthand. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and this was an agency that I had represented and spoken on behalf of for 15 years.”
Montenegro recalled seeing ICE agents surveil her neighborhood looking for landscapers to pull over. That’s something she said would have never happened prior to the implementation of racial profiling. She also said she was concerned about ICE agents patrolling sensitive locations like churches, schools and hospitals.
On detention centers and prisons in foreign countries:
“The removal process is a civil legal process. It’s not punitive in nature, it’s not a criminal proceeding. So to remove individuals to a third country and to put them in prison there, I just don’t understand what they’re in prison for. They have not committed a crime there. They should not be serving a criminal sentence in another country’s prison. So that is very concerning to me. I have been inside (the ICE facility in) Broadview many, many times. That is a location that’s called a processing facility. It’s not intended for long-term detention, and it just seemed like so many arrests were being made that those rules and norms that previously guided the detention process were not being put into place.”
On her departure from the federal government:
“The ‘fork in the road’ email, it was shock and horror. It was to me a shot across the bow that nothing was going to be as it ever was. It was the first time that we had ever received a government-wide communication. Typically, in the government, you receive clear guidance from your specific agency. It doesn’t come from a nameless, faceless email with a subject line like ‘fork in the road.’ It was basically giving people 10 days to make a life-changing decision without really knowing who it was coming from, what it meant. Fortunately for me, I was one of the lucky people that I was close enough to getting my full retirement benefits that I was able to take it and take an early retirement and kind of hold on to most of what I had earned throughout my career, but many people didn’t have that choice, and I remember reading in one of the FAQs that it basically said you should take this deal and you’ll get paid for nine months and you can go sit on the beach and have a nice little vacation, and it was just a very condescending way for my employer to speak to me. I had given everything to this job, everything, weekends, late nights, I had earned all kinds of accolades, the highest honors you can get from an agency, and then all of a sudden it was like my employer had turned against me, and nobody understood why, why that was happening. It really just didn’t make sense. And when I opened up that email, I was at home alone, and I ran to the bathroom, and I was physically ill. That had never happened to me. It was that disconcerting.”
On the direction of immigration courts:
“One of my dear friends — she was the chief immigration judge of the immigration courts at the time — was fired within one hour of the inauguration on a federal holiday, while she was working on a federal holiday. The four people fired during that hour from my agency were all women, and then many of my friends are part of the hundreds of immigration judges who have been fired since then without cause, which has never happened before, and now they are hiring new deportation judges to fill those positions. Now the term ‘deportation judge’ is troubling, and it sends the message that removal, instead of due process, is the intended result of this proceeding, and that is an erosion of justice.”
On repairing public trust:
Earlier this year, a PBS News and NPR poll found that more Americans disapprove of ICE, with 60% saying they disapprove of the job the agency is doing. In 2025, a YouGov poll found that more Americans supported (46%) abolishing ICE than opposed it (41%).
With public opinion for ICE on the decline, Montenegro questioned whether it is even possible to repair trust with the general public.
“I feel like so much damage has been done, and this is an agency that really had to fight for its place. It had to sort of reinvent itself and create a new identity. When DHS was created, it combined the customs authorities with the immigration enforcement authorities under the INS, and merged those into ICE, and as with any merger, there’s going to be some bumps along the way, and ICE really worked hard and had become a professional law enforcement agency that deserved respect, and I was proud to go out there and represent them. I mean, you’re always going to have your critics when it comes to immigration enforcement, you know. Half the people think you’re not doing enough, and half think that you’re doing too much, but that came with the territory. But I am really saddened to see what has become of ICE’s reputation, and it’s going to be very difficult to repair it. I hope it’s possible at all.”
