Last week, off-duty ICE agent Adam Saracco was charged with assaulting 68-year-old Robert Held outside of a Brookfield gas station last December. Held, who is a civilian attorney, had been protesting the ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, where people have been detained by ICE with no access to their families or attorneys since September under operation “Midway Blitz.”
Held followed Saracco to the gas station from the Broadview detention facility parking lot and was filming him on a nearby sidewalk. That’s when, according to Held, Saracco charged him, threw him to the ground, and tried to take away his phone. After Held told Saracco to calm down, and onlookers gathered around and honked their horns, Saracco eventually let him go. It only took him getting filmed for Saracco to lash out and assault an elderly Held in broad daylight.
This is the second time Held, who is 68, was knocked down by ICE agents. The first was last October when he was arrested while protesting at the Broadview facility, where he spent eight hours in custody before being released.
Saracco was charged with misdemeanor battery for assaulting Held, even though Brookfield police initially told Held they’d charge Saracco with a felony since Held is over the age of sixty and was attacked on a public sidewalk. According to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, after reviewing the evidence, prosecutors decided that misdemeanor charges were more appropriate.
Had the State’s Attorney’s office taken a look at Saracco’s past, they’d see a violent person who’s not afraid to brutalize and assault people with no remorse.
Though DHS refused to confirm or deny that Saracco works for them, Saracco’s name was listed as an ICE agent in a 2016 lawsuit filed on behalf of James Cheshire. James, who is an immigrant of African descent, alleged that in early 2016, Saraccco and a group of other ICE agents physically and verbally assaulted him with excessive force, while spewing derogatory racial slurs at him as they tried to force him to endorse documents he did not know about.
Saracco joins a list of violent ICE Gestapo who’ve been murdering, shooting, kidnapping, and terrorizing immigrant neighborhoods and protestors in Chicago since Operation Midway Blitz began last fall. In September, two ICE agents shot and killed 37-year-old Silverio Villegas Gonzalez while he attempted to flee from the masked agents. Agents claimed that Silverio was attempting to run one of them over when they shot, but video footage shows the agents shooting through Silverio’s back window, killing him and causing his vehicle to crash. The following month, Border Patrol Nazi Charles Exum shot 30-year-old Marimar Martinez five times in Brighton Park after she followed their vehicle and alerted people in the neighborhood that federal agents were in the area and to stay clear. Exum and other agents alleged that Marimar and 10 other vehicles rammed and boxed them in, causing Exum to shoot in self-defense, but video footage shows that agents were not boxed in before Exum opened fire on Marimar. Court evidence also shows that Exum and other agents got a kick out of attacking Marimar. Body cam audio revealed an agent in Exum’s car goading him to “Do something bitch” before he shot Marimar. Text messages also showed Exum gloating about the shooting, saying, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.” It didn’t help that an Exum drove 1,100 miles to Maine to repair the vehicle he and other agents alleged Marimar rammed, conveniently destroying evidence and prompting the assault charges against Marimar to be dropped.
Despite these horrific acts by ICE and the evidence against them, the Cook County State’s Attorney has done nothing to charge the agents responsible for murdering Silverio or put attempted murder charges against Exum and his fellow agents for nearly killing Marimar. Instead, by placing a laughable misdemeanor charge on Sacarro and ignoring these other cases, the State’s Attorney’s office is actively choosing to turn a blind eye to immigrants and other Chicagoans victimized by ICE terror.
In a statement made after the brutal murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke expressed outrage against the “unnecessary” deaths caused by ICE. However, she quickly deflected any criticisms of her office about charging ICE agents claiming that her office could not conduct “independent investigations into criminal conduct and has no jurisdiction over federal agencies or facilities” in response to ICE attacks and had to rely on law enforcement investigation before making charges.
Why doesn’t Burke push for CPD or Franklin Park police to investigate Silverio’s murder and Marimar’s attempted murder, when both fall under her jurisdiction? If she is so outraged by the “untold amount of terror ICE unleashed on communities,” why didn’t she push for felony charges on Saracco when she had the chance?
If all Burke has to offer Silverio, Marimar, and now Held are excuses, then fuck her outrage. It’s not surprising for Burke to sit on her ass in the face of law enforcement murders when she has allowed law enforcement to murder people with impunity. Just ask the families of Timothy Glaze, Nate Fejerang, and Roberto Calvario Jr., to name a few, about how they feel knowing that their loved ones’ killers are still walking the streets freely.
Burke’s outrage is bullshit. If she won’t do her job willingly, then it’s up to the people to fight to put charges on these pigs and get them off our streets. If you’re outraged by ICE and police killings and violence, if you want to stand with impacted families and victims of ICE and police violence, then join Dare to Struggle and work with us to organize and fight back against police brutality wherever and whenever it happens!
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