Man Pleads Guilty to Firing Near Border Agents in Operation Midway Blitz

Federal prosecutors in Chicago secured their second guilty plea tied to Operation Midway Blitz on Monday, as a 46-year-old man admitted he fired a gun near U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents during the immigration enforcement campaign.

Hector Gomez pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm as a felon before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly, who scheduled sentencing for July 20. Gomez also admitted he is a Mexican citizen unlawfully present in the United States.

The Nov. 8 shooting incident drew skepticism from the start.

When federal agents initially reported that someone had fired a weapon near border patrol officers during Operation Midway Blitz, no charges against a shooter followed for weeks. That gap fueled doubts about whether the incident had occurred as described. Gomez’s admission Monday goes only so far, acknowledging that he discharged his weapon “in proximity of” the agents, with no further details about intent or distance. No one was reported hit by gunfire in the incident.

Gomez has been held for nearly six months on the weapons charges. His plea doesn’t resolve every question about what happened on Nov. 8, but it gives federal prosecutors their first confirmed admission tied to the shooting claim that drew national attention during a politically charged enforcement operation.

Operation Midway Blitz was a sweeping deportation campaign that brought U.S. Border Patrol agents into Chicago neighborhoods, including Little Village on the Southwest Side, as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement push. The operation generated sustained tension in immigrant communities across the city and became a flashpoint in the broader national debate over interior enforcement.

According to Chicago Sun-Times reporting, federal prosecutors charged 32 known defendants with nonimmigration crimes tied to the operation. Twenty of those defendants have been cleared. Four more are on track to have their cases dismissed. That leaves a narrow set of cases moving toward conviction, and Gomez’s plea is only the second guilty verdict among them.

The first came earlier this month. Anthony Gonzalez Alvarez pleaded guilty to concealing information about a crime and admitted he drove his Ford F-250 into the rear of a vehicle operated by immigration officers. That plea and Gomez’s admission are the two outcomes federal prosecutors can point to from an operation that produced dozens of charges.

The numbers tell their own story.

Of 32 defendants charged with nonimmigration crimes, more than two-thirds have had their cases cleared or are heading toward dismissal. Two have pleaded guilty. The pattern raises questions about how federal prosecutors selected targets during the Midway Blitz sweep, and whether the charging decisions that followed held up to legal scrutiny.

Civil liberties advocates and immigration attorneys in Chicago have argued since last fall that the operation cast too wide a net, pulling in residents on the basis of minor or disputed conduct that wouldn’t ordinarily warrant federal prosecution. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois has tracked enforcement actions tied to the operation and pressed for transparency about how agents identified targets.

Gomez’s case carries its own complications. The charge to which he pleaded, felon in possession of a firearm, doesn’t require prosecutors to prove he intentionally fired at agents or that anyone was endangered. His admission that he discharged the weapon “in proximity of” agents is legally sufficient for the plea, but the phrase leaves the factual record thin. No charging document or courtroom statement filed in this case, as reported, specifies how close agents were, whether they returned fire, or whether investigators established a clear line of sight.

U.S. District Judge Kennelly will hear arguments at sentencing on July 20, when prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to address the full circumstances of the Nov. 8 incident. Gomez has been held in federal custody since his arrest, now approaching six months.

What happens at sentencing may offer a clearer picture of what federal investigators believe actually occurred near those border agents on a November night in Chicago. For now, the public record contains one three-word phrase, “in proximity of,” and a guilty plea to a gun charge from a man who won’t be before a judge again until midsummer.