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The Department of Homeland Security has announced a new immigration enforcement operation in Chicago in memory of an American citizen who was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run by an illegal immigrant.

The new initiative, called Operation Midway Blitz, will focus on identifying, arresting, and deporting what it described as the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal immigrants currently in Chicago and the surrounding areas. DHS officials said that the operation is a direct response to the death of Katie Abraham, a young woman who died in a hit-and-run crash allegedly caused by Julio Cucul-Bol, who was living in Illinois illegally.

According to DHS, the operation will specifically target individuals with serious criminal records, including gang members, drug traffickers, and kidnappers, many of whom they claim were released back into the community due to Illinois’ sanctuary policies. ICE agents will be deployed throughout Chicago to track down these individuals, leveraging federal resources and intelligence networks to locate and remove them from the country. Officials stated that these enforcement actions will be aggressive, sustained, and prioritized in jurisdictions where local cooperation with federal immigration authorities has been limited or blocked.

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated that the operation is meant to restore law and order in cities that have become, in DHS’s view, safe havens for violent offenders due to local political decisions. The agency also pointed to Governor JB Pritzker’s administration as a contributing factor in what it claims is a growing public safety crisis, arguing that sanctuary policies attract criminal elements who believe they can avoid accountability. DHS reiterated that anyone who is in the country illegally and commits crimes will be pursued, arrested, and deported under this initiative.

This comes as the governor of Illinois has been critical in recent weeks of the Trump administration, especially over statements that Trump would deploy troops to Chicago to restore “law and order.” While officials in Chicago recognize the city has problems with crime, they maintain that deploying troops to the city would not solve issues and would only inflame problems. In addition, the governor of Illinois maintains that there is no “emergency that warrants the deployment of troops” into Chicago.

Pritzker claims that “None of this is about fighting crime or making Chicago safer, for Trump it’s about testing his power.”