As soon as Veronica Beltran heard from her mom that federal immigration agents had detained her father at a Naperville Menards, she rushed from work to the home improvement store.
But by the time she got to the store on Fort Hill Drive, it was already too late. He was gone, she said.
“It’s ridiculous, the world that we live in,” Beltran told the Tribune tearfully as she stood in the parking lot with her sister, watching their father’s van get towed away. “Harming so many families, separating so many families, so many kids from their parents when they should be focusing on getting the criminals, the ones that harm this country, not the ones who work their asses off and pay taxes.”
Her father, Martin Morales, a Montgomery resident who owns a wood flooring company, was one of at least three people agents detained at the store Wednesday morning, according to witnesses. A day later, activists said at a news conference that agents have also begun targeting day laborers in Chicago as part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” calling it an “unwarranted attack.”
Miguel Alvelo Rivera, the executive director of Latino Union Chicago, said Thursday he believes about five day laborers were detained in the past two days, including three people at a Home Depot in the Montclare neighborhood. He said activists are still working to learn who the workers are and exactly where they were taken. Others reported heightened patrols at home improvement stores in Cicero and Berwyn.
“We are still not 100% sure who exactly was taken,” he said. “A lot of the calls are coming from other workers who are at those corners letting us know what happened.”
He also criticized companies like Home Depot, which he said “benefit from the undervalued and often unpaid labor of our working neighbors” and “kidnapping of our people.” Supporters carried signs that said “ICE out of the Home Depot” during the news conference, which was held across the street from the Montclare store.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported, however, that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller mentioned targeting Home Depot, and the day laborers that wait for work outside its stores, for immigration enforcement. The administration contends it is detaining the “worst of the worst” in its latest immigration crackdown.
Home Depot spokesperson George Lane said in a statement that the company isn’t “notified that ICE activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations.” Employees at Menards declined to comment Wednesday night and an email to the corporate office was not immediately returned.
Beltran said a Menards employee told the sisters that he saw “men with masks and rifles” come up to her dad’s van and talk to him. They then left. Her father went inside the store, but as he was returning to his vehicle, the agents pulled him and his workers out and handcuffed them, Beltran said of the account she received.
“I was pulling up to buy some stuff and, you know, to have it happen here in your neighborhood, it really brings it home,” said a Warrenville resident, who declined to give his name, after the arrest Wednesday. “They were putting people in the cars, handcuffed. I really couldn’t figure out who was doing what but it did say federal agents.”
The 60-year-old was left in shock.
“I can’t believe here in Naperville, well, the United States in particular, but here in Naperville that they’d be so callous as to just pick people off the street just for being a different color and nationality,” he said. “It’s unconscionable.”
Beltran, a green card holder, said her father came to the United States from Mexico 40 years ago and was in the process of obtaining legal residency. He owns Martin Morales Wood Flooring Inc., and the other two men detained at the Menards Wednesday were his employees, she said.
She said Wednesday night that the family still hadn’t heard from her father, and that they were trying to determine where he had been working so they could pick up his tools.
Naperville police Cmdr. Rick Krakow said the police department was not contacted by federal authorities in advance of Wednesday’s immigration enforcement in Naperville. Naperville police officers were not involved in any of the arrests, he said.
A press statement later put out by Naperville police further clarified that, by law, the department cannot assist with immigration enforcement activity.
Protesters march, play music and chant on Sept. 16, 2025, during a walk along North Avenue in Melrose Park against recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, a Naperville Democrat, said in a news release that she had been briefed Monday on ICE’s actions in the Chicago area as a ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations and was disturbed by what was happening. She said detainees who have been arrested and processed are being taken to locations in Indiana and Wisconsin.
Geovanni Celaya, an organizer with Latino Union Chicago who works with day laborers and migrant workers, said it previously appeared that federal immigration agents weren’t targeting day laborers, but that it changed about two days ago, although he isn’t surprised based on enforcement in other states. He said many of the workers he’s talked to are afraid.
“At the end of the day, these folks don’t have the privilege to not go out and look for work,” Celaya said. “They’re dependent on looking for work at these corners, because that’s all that’s accessible based on this immigration system.”
“They have to bring food to the table, have to provide for a family member,” he added. “I see my family in day laborers. I see my friends in day laborers. I see myself in day labor, because we’re all at risk.”
Also in Naperville Wednesday, ICE officers detained roofers working at a home in the Cress Creek subdivision, in what neighbors described as a chaotic and “irresponsible” situation, as reported in WGN-TV. One roofer, who did not want to reveal his identity, told WGN-TV that the agents were violent in their efforts to take several of his coworkers into custody.
“They commenced to attack us, to throw us onto the ground,” the roofer said. “Some of them are fathers. It’s very hard what is happening. It’s a lot of harm that they’re doing to us.”
Willian Alberto Giménez González, a prominent Chicago day laborer, was arrested last Friday when he went to a barbershop in the Little Village neighborhood. He filed a petition in federal court Sunday asking a judge to bar his deportation and release him on bond. Federal authorities said in this case that there is “nothing unjust about enforcing the law and ensuring this illegal alien adheres to the laws of the United States.”
State Sen. Graciela Guzmán, a Chicago Democrat whose nearby Northwest Side district covers Latino communities in Logan Square, Kelvyn Park and Belmont Cragin, said at the news conference that she has seen federal immigration agents “try to rip apart families as they seek to take their children to school, as people seek to go to work, as they seek to be beloved community members.”
“Belmont Cragin is a unique community in Chicago. It literally will not allow itself to bend at the knee of anyone,” she said. “This is a community that is resilient, that organizes in the face of anything and everything.”