Chicago Filmmakers Expose ICE Raids' Human Cost at Doc10 Festival

At Chicago’s annual Doc10 Film Festival this year, the spotlight wasn’t on glitzy premieres or celebrity directors. Instead, the focus was raw, urgent, and local: the human toll of last year’s massive ICE raids across the Chicagoland area known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”

In a packed theater at the Davis Theater, viewers heard firsthand from Eva Gurtovaia, whose husband, Kurdish asylum seeker Enes Abek, has been shuffled between detention centers as he awaits a judge’s decision that could send him back to Turkey or allow him to return home to Chicago. The legal and logistical fight to bring him back will cost $24,000 — a crushing burden that Eva is struggling to meet despite working 60-plus hours a week.

Her story, “Eva’s Story,” was one of several shorts by Chicago filmmaker Andrew Freer, founder of the investigative documentary outfit Go Fourth Media. Freer launched the company amid the raids to document the stories ICE doesn’t want told — stories of wrongful detentions, shattered families, and lives upended. His film “Scott’s Story” tells of a neighbor wrongfully detained by ICE, highlighting the indiscriminate nature of the enforcement blitz.

“People are scared to speak out, but for many like Eva, this is the last resort,” Freer said. “Sharing their stories is a way to get support and put pressure on the government.”

Freer emphasized the unique power of documentary film to humanize complex issues that often get lost in political rhetoric. “We want people to feel what it’s like to be targeted by ICE, to understand the fear and uncertainty these families endure,” he said. “These rights violations are ongoing, and we need to keep the spotlight on them.”

The festival’s broader “Speak Truth” series and closing panel, “ICE Under Watch: Media and Community Resistance,” underscored a crucial shift in Doc10’s mission. Co-founder Paula Froehle explained the decision to focus on local stories that reveal the intimate, lived realities behind headline-grabbing events.

Another poignant film, “El Sueño” (“The Dream”), by Chicago documentarian Carlos Javier Ortiz, follows Venezuelan migrant families forced into the city by Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s refugee dispersal policy. Ortiz’s unfinished feature captures three years of resilience amid government repression and community upheaval in Little Village.

“People are not here to harm anyone,” Ortiz said. “They are human beings, trying to live their lives despite being teargassed and targeted by their own government.”

In a political landscape where immigration enforcement has become a tool of authoritarian overreach, these films serve as a vital record and a call to action. They remind us that behind every ICE raid statistic is a family fighting for their dignity and their future — and that the fight for justice is far from over.