Op-Ed: One year after Midway Blitz, Illinois must decide whether the law applies to federal agents

One year ago, the federal government launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Four days later, an ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park after he dropped his children off at school.

What followed is now well documented on real-time video and victim outcries. Victims and witnesses came forward with accounts of shootings, beatings, unlawful detentions and other serious misconduct. New efforts, including the ICE Accountability Project and the Illinois Accountability Commission, collected testimony and evidence, with the Commission ultimately producing a nearly 200-page report. But reports and documentation can only go so far. It is local police and prosecutors who have the authority to investigate potential crimes and, where the evidence supports it, bring charges.

And a year later, no federal agent has been charged with an on-duty crime connected to Operation Midway Blitz.

The Illinois State Police investigation into González’s killing has been open for months with no publicly announced conclusion. Victims like Marimar Martinez and eight others had to file their own police reports in August to formally initiate investigations into incidents that were known by law enforcement for months — including Martinez’s shooting by a Border Patrol agent last October.

For much of the past year, state and local authorities were silent.  And then as public pressure mounted,  they have  been scrambling to establish who is responsible for investigating alleged crimes by federal agents, who can obtain evidence and when prosecutors can become involved. Too often, that uncertainty has looked like finger-pointing. But after a year, uncertainty over process can no longer explain the absence of answers.

Franklin Park ultimately turned to Illinois State Police to investigate González’s killing. Evanston police investigated federal agents for months before formally asking the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office for specialized assistance. Chicago established procedures for investigating alleged crimes by federal immigration agents and has reportedly assigned specialized investigators to Martinez’s shooting.

No more excuses.  Where are the results?

Saying a special process now exists is not accountability. Opening an investigation is not accountability. Passing evidence from one agency to another is not accountability.

We know these cases are difficult. We also know difficulty does not make accountability impossible.

In Minnesota, Hennepin County prosecutors have charged two federal agents with felonies for alleged on-duty conduct during Operation Metro Surge. When federal authorities withheld evidence in other cases, county prosecutors joined state officials in suing the federal government to obtain it. Minnesota has faced many of the same jurisdictional and evidentiary obstacles we have faced in Illinois. Its officials have chosen to confront them.

Even in Texas, prosecutors are moving aggressively. After an ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7, the Harris County district attorney opened an independent investigation despite federal authorities withholding evidence. Less than two months later, the prosecutor announced that he will take the case to a grand jury, in part to compel additional evidence.

Illinois does not need to reach the same outcome in every case. But we should expect the same determination to find the facts and follow them wherever they lead.

I have spent much of my career working at the intersection of law enforcement and accountability — as a federal prosecutor, leading police accountability efforts in Chicago and, later, as mayor. I know the difference between conduct that is disturbing, conduct that violates policy and conduct that can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to violate criminal law.

Prosecutors should never lower that standard because a case is politically charged or because there is public pressure to act. But neither should the identity of a potential defendant raise the standard so high that accountability becomes practically impossible.

When any law enforcement officer is credibly accused of shooting someone without legal justification, beating a civilian or unlawfully detaining someone, we should expect an expeditious, thorough investigation and a decision when that investigation is complete. A federal badge makes the legal analysis more complicated. It should not make the analysis nonexistent.

Nor should smaller police departments be left to navigate these cases alone. That is why Illinois has state and county institutions with broader resources and expertise. When local departments ask for help, those institutions need to provide it. Investigations need to reach conclusions. Prosecutors need to make decisions.

Those decisions will not always result in charges. Accountability does not require a predetermined outcome. It requires a credible process that actually reaches an outcome.

González’s family has waited nearly a year since he was killed. They deserve to know what investigators found and what happens next. Martinez deserves a thorough investigation of the shooting that nearly took her life. And the other Illinois residents who have come forward with serious accounts of misconduct by federal agents deserve answers.

The public deserves to know whether the same laws that govern everyone else in Illinois can be meaningfully enforced when the person accused of violating them is a federal law enforcement officer.

Operation Midway Blitz began one year ago. We have spent much of the year documenting what happened, establishing procedures and deciding which institution should take the next step.

That cannot become the permanent state of affairs.

The question is no longer whether Illinois has a path for holding federal agents accountable under state law. We do.

The question is whether we have the will to follow it.