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Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Tuesday joined Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a “targeted operation,” according to a release from the Department of Homeland Security.
The department stated that the operation was to “serve a felony arrest warrant for a criminal illegal alien in the Chicago area.”
The release said several men, all of whom it described as “criminal illegal aliens,” were arrested as a result of the raid. Noem also posted footage of the raid on X.
However, two of the men caught up in the operation were actually U.S. citizens, according to CBS News. The outlet noted that the two individuals were able to prove their citizenship and have since been released.
Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images
One of them, 37-year-old Joe Botello, recounted the incident in detail to the Chicago Tribune. Botello, who was born in the U.S., told the Tribune that masked officers entered his home by force, destroying his front door, and that he was handcuffed and questioned inside a Customs and Border Protection vehicle. Botello does not appear on the list of men featured in the DHS press release on the raid.
“I’m just blessed that I’m still alive,” Botello told the Tribune. “I’ve been hearing it and seeing it through social media. But it never crossed my mind that it was going to happen here at the house… where I live.”
DHS disputed that any U.S. citizens were arrested, telling HuffPost in a statement that they had been “briefly” held.
“No U.S. citizens were arrested, they were briefly held for their and the officers’ safety while the operation in the house was underway,” the statement read. “This is standard protocol.”
According to the Tribune, Botello was one of the men seen in handcuffs in the video of the raid posted by Noem.
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Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.
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“I was on the ground in Chicago today to make clear we are not backing down,” she wrote. “Just this morning, DHS took violent offenders off the streets with arrests for assault, DUI, and felony stalking. Our work is only beginning.”
In August, Noem said that Trump’s administration planned to expand ICE’s presence in Chicago. That same month, Trump’s team asked the military for assistance in its crackdown on immigrants in the area.
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