At dawn on September 30 of the previous year, a multitude of federal operatives converged upon the South Shore Apartments, a light-brown brick complex located on Chicago’s South Side. While officers clad in body armor rappelled from a hovering Black Hawk aircraft, others forcefully breached the building’s entrances with battering rams, apprehending residents at gunpoint.
A contingent of robust, masked agents, donning helmets and ballistic vests and carrying M4 carbines fitted with suppressors, traversed the corridors in a swift, disciplined formation. Padraic Daniel Berlin, a 34-year-old Michigan native and the son of a Detroit firefighter, restrained Yoda, his Belgian Malinois, with a leash. David Dubar Jr., a 53-year-old former construction worker, trailed intimately behind him. Corey Myers, a Marine alumnus from the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector and their squad’s leader, inspected apartment doors. Paul Delgado Jr., a distinguished high school cross-country athlete, completed the entry unit.
These four individuals belong to the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC. Primarily operating from Fort Bliss, and possessing a minimum of 11 detachments deployed throughout the United States, BORTAC, alongside its affiliated division, Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR), were formerly designated for wilderness recoveries, carrying out perilous warrants, engagements with weaponized narcotics syndicates, and extensive searches for fugitives.
Nevertheless, during Donald Trump’s tenure, these units have been dispatched into the urban thoroughfares of prominent US metropolises. This has led to the most extensive documented deployment of BORTAC and BORSTAR personnel in American annals, a circumstance rendered challenging to ascertain owing to the government’s discretion concerning their endeavors. Numerous operatives’ particulars have stayed undisclosed to the populace. The choice to utilize aggressive, heavily weaponized paramilitary forces for grassroots immigration roundups in American urban centers marks a precedent—a harbinger of the Trump administration’s initiative to militarize internal law enforcement activities.
The squad, including Myers, Berlin, Dubar, and Delgado, seemed on edge. The tactical debriefing they obtained asserted the edifice was under the sway of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal collective which the Trump administration, notwithstanding conflicting data gathered by its own intelligence agencies, had classified as an international terrorist entity. Members of the syndicate were allegedly inhabiting the structure and stashing explosives, pistols, and long guns on the first upper level, where an individual with an active arrest order for weapon possession resided. These insights were neither divulged nor corroborated, and the state of Illinois subsequently initiated an inquiry into whether the estate proprietor had forwarded unfounded allegations to federal authorities. However, in that instant, its veracity was inconsequential.
Before each portal his unit neared, Berlin bellowed, “Law enforcement! Communicate immediately or I will release the canine!” Within a dwelling on the first upper level, the BORTAC squad apprehended one individual. Deeper in the passageway, Myers observed indications of “unlawful ingress” and forcibly broke open the entrance. Tolulope Akinsulie, an unauthorized migrant from Nigeria, was fortuitously concealed within the sleeping chamber. Without providing any admonition or oral directive, Berlin unfastened Yoda’s lead, and the Malinois lunged, embedding its fangs into Akinsulie’s limb as he shrieked in torment. Yoda mauled Akinsulie multiple times on his leg, pelvis, and extremities prior to Berlin recalling the animal and his unit securing the man with restraints. Akinsulie, an individual not specifically targeted by the operation and lacking any documented record of violent offenses or syndicate involvement, received medical attention for his wounds and was transported to the Broadview Processing Center to confront deportation procedures.
Berlin’s conduct during that dawn was not an isolated occurrence. He participated in a minimum of five instances of force application during Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s 2025 influx of numerous immigration operatives into Chicago and neighboring districts. Neither were his team’s endeavors, as per a WIRED examination of United States government documentation, which seemingly amplified friction with civilian observers instead of de-escalating it. Since the previous year, BORTAC and BORSTAR have spearheaded multiple incursions by the US government into its own urban centers, frequently employing almost dramatic displays of power that permeate news reports and social media channels, imparting renewed prominence to the US Border Patrol Special Operations Group’s self-declared designation as the “vanguard.”
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