Journalists Ask The Worst Questions: Are You A Criminal?


Image not from story. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Natalie Sandoval Patriots Writer
April 14, 2026 11:36 AM ET

Federal law enforcement raided a Chicago apartment complex on Sept. 30, 2025, resulting in the arrest of 37 illegal aliens.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says the aliens hailed from countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, and Colombia, and that “Tren de Aragua gang members and violent criminals” were among the arrested.
The intrepid journalists at ProPublica aren’t buying the Trump administration’s narrative.

“[W]hat prompted the raid was more pedestrian: allegations that immigrants were squatting in the complex. And the landlord had given federal officials, who were already targeting immigrants in Chicago, the blessing to search the building,” write Melissa Sanchez and Jodi Cohen.

Sanchez and Cohen fail to remark on the extraordinary nature of the circumstances they’ve described.

Nearly 40 illegal aliens were allegedly living in an apartment building in Chicago. Some or many of them were squatters. The owner of that building apparently had to rely on the federal government to flush them out.

Instead, Sanchez and Cohen appear to take an accusatory tone toward the landlord: “From the beginning there had been questions about whether Flood and her property manager tipped off the government to get rid of squatters in her building…”



CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – SEPTEMBER 30: Demonstrators protest the Trump administration with a march through downtown on September 30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. The protest was organized on the heels of ICE raids in the city, including a raid on an apartment building early that morning that involved a reported 300 federal agents. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

So, how do we know that some of the alien squatters weren’t Tren de Aragua members?

Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at DHS, told ProPublica that the raid resulted in the arrest of two confirmed Tren de Aragua members. “One of these members was a positive match on the Terror Screening Watchlist,” McLaughlin wrote in a statement.

“Given that two individuals of a Foreign Terrorist Organization were arrested, at a building they are known to frequent, we are limited on further information we can provide. The safety and protection of sources is more important than your story,” McLaughlin concluded.
Sanchez and Cohen note that DHS does not mention Tren de Aragua in arrest records reviewed by the journalists.

Then, they write: “Over the past few months, ProPublica has interviewed 15 of the immigrants detained that night; all denied gang membership. They and others who lived in the building acknowledged there was criminal activity there, including the murder of a Venezuelan man last summer, but nobody knew of gang members there.”

That settles it. Gang members are famously honest.

https://dailycaller.com/2026/04/14/p...ren-de-aragua/