Now We Know Their Names

[Agent] Andy, Andy.

Doors, doors, doors.

What you're seeing is border patrol agents

descend on the Irving Park neighborhood

on the north side of Chicago.

What's your badge number?

I've been reporting on police my entire career.

This was an example of blatant violence, excessive force

Like countless other immigration enforcement operations,

this one descends into violence,

ultimately leaving an American citizen with six broken ribs.

As we've seen

since the start of the second Trump administration,

these agents are all wearing masks

and none of their identities were known until now.

Thanks to records released

as part of a lawsuit against

the Department of Homeland Security,

Wire was able to identify these agents

and hundreds of others

that used force against American citizens

and undocumented people alike.

Today we'll break down how we identify these officers.

This is Incognito Mode.

Roving bands of masked, essentially secret police,

taking people off the street

and engaging in violence with American citizens

has been a defining factor

of the second Trump administration

And that has really freaked a lot of people out.

So that's really why I started paying attention

to these raids.

'Cause there's something very distinctive,

very new in American law enforcement.

It's not protest response,

this is the use of not just immigration agents,

but paramilitary units of the federal government

to do civil immigration enforcement.

And that is a huge break.

So when Ali came to me with this story,

saying he'd figured out a way

to identify a lot of these agents,

I was immediately hooked.

It's impossible to have secret police

and have democracy at the same time.

So I knew we had to tell this story

and I also knew it was gonna be a lot of work.

The way Ali started to identify these agents

was thanks to some court records,

released as part of a lawsuit

against the Department of Homeland Security

filed by the state of Illinois.

Last fall, I started to look

for a paper trail behind all the uses of force

that we were seeing.

And in the case of the feds, I knew the name of the system.

It is an E-STAR report.

E-STAR reports or use of force reports

document any time an agent uses any type of force.

So this could be throwing tear gas,

shooting a rubber bullet,

any time there's any type of use of force,

agents have to report this.

So I started looking at the litigation

around the uses of force

because the allegation was that they were just wantonly

using force with no regard for public safety.

[crowd screaming]

[explosion booming]

The lawsuit over Midway Blitz, the operation in Chicago,

yielded the largest set of use of force reports.

Through reviewing this docket,

I was able to obtain dozens of E-STAR reports.

These were partially redacted,

but by and large, the names of the agents,

the names of the people arrested,

the narratives of the incidents were left intact,

which means you can see which agent from which agency

was present at an incident and what type of force they used.

Using these E-STAR reports,

we've been able to identify

hundreds of custom and border protection, border patrol

and immigration customs enforcement agents.

The E-STAR reports give us some basic information,

but to figure out who these agents actually are,

we use LexiNexis,

a data broker that compiles a ton of information

about pretty much every American.

This can include every address somebody lived at,

their telephone number, email addresses.

From there, we can take

the little bits of information we've gathered,

maybe the name of their spouse or an email address,

and start to do some additional research.

Another set of tools we use

are known as open source intelligence or OSINT tools.

Using open source intelligence tools,

we can plug in say somebody's email address

and link that to home address,

other email addresses, phone numbers,

and all types of other information

that can help us narrow it down

and know that we're investigating exactly the right person.

Every bit of information that we gather,

even if it doesn't seem important,

gives us a fuller picture of who these people are

and gives us a hundred percent confidence

that reporting the facts right.

From the information that we were able to gather,

we identified two units of border patrol,

BORTAC and BORSTAR.

These units were involved

in an overwhelming number of use of force incidents.

We also found that many of these agents

appear in multiple cities,

from California to Illinois to North Carolina.

In addition to E-STAR reports,

the government was forced to release body cam footage

as part of the Illinois lawsuit against DHS.

The body cam footage provided a wealth of information.

It showed us the actual incidents

these agents were involved in.

Crucially, it also showed their call sign

or a certain ID number

that's actually used to identify them.

Tell me a little bit more about the call signs.

So law enforcement, even when they don't wear badges

or have their badges

or name plates obscured by body armor or what have you,

is that the tactical units

almost always have a alphanumeric flash on their shoulder

or on their chest protector

that identifies them to other units.

And you know, in going through body camera footage,

you can see people are saying,

Well, what's your badge number?

What's your badge number?

What's your name?

And they'll answer Romeo Zulu 3.

That's all I have to give you.

And that's their flash number.

So that's how they're identifying themselves.

So the best way to do the identification is to,

with this data set that we developed,

is to read the use of force reports,

watch the video's attendant to it

and match the name up with the body camera footage

up with the flashes that you can see.

So let's take a look at one of these incidents

from October, 2025.

We're looking at a video taken from inside a vehicle

that's containing some BORTAC agents.

This is body cam footage from an agent named T-Rico.

Yeah, so this is from the north side of Chicago

on the morning of October 25th.

So we're about six weeks into midway Blitz.

People in Chicago, are at this point very aware

of the federal presence.

So you'll be able to hear

people following this SUV and a couple others in a convoy,

honking these agents.

Rico is popping his door now to go back and admonish.

[Agent] If you wanna continue doing this

at impeding our investigations, you'll be arrested.

A group of drivers who have been following them around.

You can see that's another BORSTAR, BORTAC agent,

a tactical agent dressed in their camouflage.

That's another one right there from his unit.

That's another one.

This is Andy Chavez right here.

They're admonishing these drivers,

not to follow them for impeding investigations.

He's recording as well, the backseat passenger.

The feds also make sure to take note

of license plates as well

and send them to their central operations command as well

for intelligence on people following them.

Right, because in some incidents,

they've gotten people's license plate numbers

and then they show up at their house

as another form of intimidation

against these ICE watch groups and et cetera.

That's right.

And you can also see from the inside of this vehicle,

there are crushmas, right?

So right here, this is an M4 rifle with holographic sight

and a telescopic sight.

Don't know why he has both sights on,

but this is a military grade weapon.

It's equipped with a flash suppressor as well.

Each BORTAC BORSTAR agent,

each one of these paramilitary agents

has one of these rifles on him.

They've each got three or four spare magazines

on their vest.

Mind you, this is Saturday morning.

There is a children's Halloween parade

about to happen on this street.

And they're doing civil immigration enforcement

geared up like this, right?

You can see at one point a little bit forward,

the agents stop.

They hear something on the radio.

[T. Rico] Wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Andy, Andy

Door, doors, doors.

[Ali] About a runner, right?

So T. Rico pops his door,

takes off sprinting after this man.

So does Andy Chavez,

whose body camera, by the way, is also rolling.

Chavez tackles this man, a Latino man

who was running from the federal agents, cuffs him up.

[Andy] Cuffs, cuffs. Oh, god.

[Ali] And they're almost immediately

surrounded by residents who are livid.

They are screaming them to get off their lawn.

Where's your badge number?

Mind you, this right here,

that is Andy Chavez's unique identifier,

Romeo Zulu 17.

And that's how his other comrades know who he is, right?

I mean, you can also hear them refer to each other

on the audio of these body-worn cameras.

And that's, we go through the reports,

we go through the footage, we listen to it.

And that's the kind of ground work we do

in order to salvage their identities.

So you can see them cuff him up, right?

This is what the immigration enforcement looks like.

[Resident] Get off my property!

[residents screaming]

Get off my property!

So I think it's important to point out,

this isn't just happening to this one guy

who's having a knee on his neck,

it's happening to this entire community.

And this is not how ICE, how CBP,

Border Patrol has typically engaged themselves.

This is in an intentional choice

to terrorize everyone in this community.

Yeah, I think it's worth noting too,

like how upset people in this neighborhood got.

Get your fucking masks off, you coward.

Take your mask off, you Nazi.

They didn't see the feds apprehending this guys

as the government coming to protect them

and take dangerous people off their street.

These sweeps are deeply unpopular.

They're shredding communities apart.

And for all we know right now,

per the documentation that we've had through this lawsuit,

this man doesn't have a criminal record.

They're not going after the worst of the worst.

And they're using

basically the equivalent of a military unit to do it.

And it's important to point out

all these BORTAC agents that we can see in this video

are all masked.

None of these people know who these agents are.

None of the people in the community know who the agents are.

And they don't really have any way to find out.

It's only through this lawsuit

months after the fact that we've been able to

identify some of these people.

But nobody here has any path to recourse.

They're just at the mercy of these agents

and they're all completely anonymous.

Well, you can see them documenting the situation too,

because they want to keep a record.

They're trying to figure out

who these people are, what's going on here.

But again, in order to get some sort of recourse,

civil or criminal or otherwise,

you have to know who these folks are.

And these E-STAR reports, these use of force reports

are how we figured out that this video

happens to be shot by Agent T. Rico,

that Andy Chavez of BORTAC,

his BORTAC colleague was right next to him.

But otherwise, residents on the street,

when I called them up to interview them about this story

and tell 'em about our findings,

they had no clue who these folks were.

So this encounter didn't end there

because this entire neighborhood was really,

you can see that they're refusing to let the feds leave,

they're furious.

There's literally a guy in a bath robe.

Understand, you guys are scaring our kids.

[indistinct] Get out of the hallway.

No, no, you shouldn't even be here, man.

Saturday morning. Saturday morning.

Right before Halloween parade.

And now things start to escalate.

Border patrol agents run ahead and make contact.

This car stops behind them.

This is a resident of the street named Michael Brosilow.

He's pulled up behind them and was out.

He comes back from his training run

and you can see these agents rush up to him immediately

'cause they think he's trying to keep them in there.

They're like, Move your car, move your car.

[residents screaming]

Move you fucking car,

get the fuck out of here.

[residents yelling]

He gets pissed off at them.

He says, this is my street.

What the fuck are you doing?

And they're telling him to move his car.

You can see a canister of tear gas

has been popped already in the background.

And now Brosilow gets taken to the ground

by this agent T-Rico.

[residents shouting]

And this agent is about six feet, almost 190 pounds.

Pins the guy to the ground, has his knees on top of him.

There is an ice washer right there

who's also getting taken to the ground.

Her name's Maria Bryant.

She and Michael Brosilow,

each have about half a dozen ribs broken

during this encounter.

And they were arrested for

impeding the federal agents, right?

Not charged criminally, no charges were ever filed,

but both of them had half a dozen ribs broken

by these masked heavily armed federal agents.

[residents shouting]

Let me go.

Federal immigration agents

like many law enforcement officers

use of force protocol.

They're supposed to

kind of escalate in a very deliberate manner.

And this, you see them

going from yelling at this guy in his car

to throwing him on the ground and breaking his ribs

in just a matter of seconds.

It's zero to 60.

Yeah, and it doesn't seem like

they're going through the protocol

and maybe they can claim,

yeah, I told him three times

and that's part of the protocol, et cetera.

But it's very unlikely

that anything is gonna actually happen

just because they escalated so quickly.

Yeah, I mean, I think

having watched so much body camera footage over the years,

what stands out to me about these incidents

is how fast these tactical agents go to force, right?

And you can see this also in

the secondary arrest that happens

right behind in the background of this young woman,

this ice washer.

So from another, that agent who tackles her from behind.

In his body camera video,

in Javier Puentes' body camera video,

you can see him going up to her, shoving her forward

and saying, Why'd you hit him?

Why'd you hit that officer?

[Agent] I saw you hit him.

You hit him.

I tell you, you hit him.

[girl screaming]

So now by saying that on his camera, it's for audio,

he can take her to the ground

and arrest her for assault,

which he does and proceeds to severely injure her.

And I think that to me

is one thing that does help define

why we see so many assault on officer incidences

in these reports.

In some cases, yes, they do get rocks thrown at them.

In some cases, yes, people do throw punches at them,

but in many instances,

they are initiating the contact, right?

They're the ones throwing the pepper spray.

They're the ones pushing people back and then showing them,

hitting them again with batons,

firing less lethal weapons at them,

firing pepper balls at them.

It's just a very rapid escalation of force.

[people screaming]

I can tell you from looking through

these dozens of use of force reports

over a very tight period in Chicago,

the agents that we're talking about,

the BORTAC and BORSTAR agents,

they're overrepresented in the dataset.

They use force in more than 30% of the incidents

despite making up less than a quarter of

all the total agents that we can see

in the use of force incidents.

And not only that, they occur within a really tight period.

We're talking about some agents who use force

five or six times in a matter of two months.

That's considered extraordinarily high.

Is it just a nature of people being angry

about how immigration enforcement is going forth right now?

So I think there's a few things happening here.

The civil immigration enforcement

is incurring in a completely different context

than it has prior.

Method of operation

is designed to create tension and create conflict.

I believe that's something the White House wants.

However, at the same time,

the units that we're seeing,

they're not trained in deescalation,

they're trained to use force, they're trained to subdue.

This is not a matter of units being undertrained.

They do nothing but trained.

They're very well organized.

They deploy out into a perimeter,

they make space really well.

I've shown these body camera videos

to but a number of veterans. And what they've said is like,

yeah, that looks like how we treat a disabled vehicle

if we'd wrecked out in Marjah in Afghanistan, right?

I think that speaks volumes.

This is nothing like policing.

The deal with BORTAC and BORSTAR

is that they are trained for contact.

They have looser rules of engagement.

They also don't have to go back into these communities

and build relationships with people.

And I think that's the biggest difference here,

is that a police department

is ultimately accountable to their communities.

With ICE, there's not that same consideration.

It's just force.

[indistinct]

Regardless of how you feel about US immigration policy

or how that policy is enforced,

the fact of the matter is

that every law in the United States

is derived from the Constitution.

The government gets its authority from the people.

And if the government is deploying anonymous agents

that are arresting people on the street

without any due process,

that puts these agents above the law

and undermines the constitution.

It's for this reason

that we decided we need to publish these names.

This has been Incognito Mode.

Until next time.