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Masked federal agents are conducting immigration enforcement operations across American cities. Until now, no one knew who they were behind the mask. Using body camera footage and a custom AI tool, WIRED spent months cross-referencing court records and reports to identify Border Patrol and ICE agents involved in incidents that left American citizens with cracked ribs and no answers. This is Incognito Mode.
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00:00Andy, Andy, doors, doors, doors.
00:05What you're seeing is Border Patrol agents
00:08descend on the Irving Park neighborhood
00:09on the north side of Chicago.
00:12I've been reporting on police my entire career.
00:15This was an example of blatant violence, excessive force.
00:19Like countless other immigration enforcement operations,
00:22this one descends into violence,
00:24ultimately leaving an American citizen with six broken ribs.
00:27As we've seen since the start of the second Trump administration,
00:30these agents are all wearing masks,
00:32and none of their identities were known until now.
00:35Thanks to records released as part of a lawsuit
00:37against the Department of Homeland Security,
00:39WIRE was able to identify these agents and hundreds of others
00:42that used force against American citizens
00:44and undocumented people alike.
00:46Today, we'll break down how we identify these officers.
00:49This is Incognito Mode.
00:55Roving bands of masked, essentially secret police,
00:58taking people off the street,
00:59and engaging in violence with American citizens
01:01has been a defining factor of the second Trump administration.
01:04And that has really freaked a lot of people out.
01:07So that's really why I started paying attention to these raids,
01:10because there's something very distinct
01:11and very new in American law enforcement.
01:13It's not protest response.
01:14This is the use of not just immigration agents,
01:18but paramilitary units of the federal government
01:20to do civil immigration enforcement.
01:22And that is a huge break.
01:24So when Ali came to me with this story,
01:26saying he'd figured out a way to identify a lot of these agents,
01:29I was immediately hooked.
01:30It's impossible to have secret police
01:32and have democracy at the same time.
01:34So I knew we had to tell this story.
01:35And I also knew it was going to be a lot of work.
01:37The way Ali started to identify these agents
01:39was thanks to some court records released as part of a lawsuit
01:42against the Department of Homeland Security
01:44filed by the state of Illinois.
01:46Last fall, I started to look for a paper trail
01:49behind all the uses of force that we were seeing.
01:52And in the case of the feds, I knew the name of the system.
01:55It is an E-Star report.
01:57E-Star reports, or use of force reports,
02:00document any time an agent uses any type of force.
02:03So this could be throwing tear gas, shooting a rubber bullet.
02:06Any time there's any type of use of force,
02:09agents have to report this.
02:10So I started looking at the litigation around the uses of force
02:16because the allegation was that they were just wantonly using force
02:19with no regard for public safety.
02:24The lawsuit over Midway Blitz, the operation in Chicago,
02:28yielded the largest set of use of force reports.
02:33Through reviewing this docket,
02:35I was able to obtain dozens of E-Star reports.
02:40These were partially redacted, but by and large,
02:43the names of the agents, the names of the people arrested,
02:46the narratives of the incidents were left intact,
02:49which means you can see which agent from which agency
02:52was present at an incident and what type of force they used.
02:59Using these E-Star reports, we've been able to identify hundreds
03:02of Custom and Border Protection, Border Patrol,
03:04and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
03:07The E-Star reports give us some basic information,
03:09but to figure out who these agents actually are,
03:12we use LexisNexis, a data broker that compiles a ton of information
03:16about pretty much every American.
03:18This can include every address somebody lived at,
03:20their telephone number, email addresses.
03:22From there, we can take the little bits of information
03:24we've gathered, maybe the name of their spouse or an email address,
03:28and start to do some additional research.
03:30Another set of tools we use are known as open source intelligence
03:33or OSINT tools.
03:34Using open source intelligence tools,
03:36we can plug in, say, somebody's email address
03:38and link that to home address, other email addresses, phone numbers,
03:42and all types of other information that can help us narrow it down
03:45and know that we're investigating exactly the right person.
03:48Every bit of information that we gather,
03:49even if it doesn't seem important,
03:51gives us a fuller picture of who these people are
03:53and gives us 100% confidence that we're reporting the facts right.
03:56From the information that we were able to gather,
03:58we identified two units of Border Patrol, BORTAC and BORSTAR.
04:02These units were involved in an overwhelming number of use of force incidents.
04:06We also found that many of these agents appear in multiple cities,
04:09from California to Illinois to North Carolina.
04:12In addition to E-Star reports,
04:14the government was forced to release body cam footage
04:16as part of the Illinois lawsuit against DHS.
04:19The body cam footage provided a wealth of information.
04:21It showed us the actual incidents these agents were involved in.
04:25Crucially, it also showed their call sign,
04:27or a certain ID number that's actually used to identify them.
04:30Tell me a little bit more about the call signs.
04:31So, law enforcement, even when they don't wear badges
04:34or have their badges or nameplates obscured by body armor,
04:38or what have you,
04:39is that the tactical units almost always have
04:42a alphanumeric flash on their shoulder or on their chest protector
04:46that identifies them to other units.
04:49And, you know, in going through body camera footage,
04:51you can see, you know, people are saying,
04:52well, what's your badge number?
04:53What's your badge number?
04:54What's your name?
04:54And they'll answer, Romeo Zulu 3.
04:56That's all I have to give you.
04:58And that's their flash number.
05:00So, that's how they're identifying themselves.
05:02So, the best way to do the identification is to,
05:04with this dataset that we developed,
05:06is to read the use of force reports,
05:08watch the videos attendant to it,
05:10and match the name up with the body camera footage,
05:14up with the flashes that you can see.
05:20So, let's take a look at one of these incidents from October 2025.
05:24We're looking at a video taken from inside a vehicle
05:27that's containing some Bortac agents.
05:29This is body cam footage from an agent named T Rico.
05:33Yeah, so this is from the north side of Chicago
05:35on the morning of October 25th.
05:38So, we're about six weeks into Midway Blitz.
05:41People in Chicago are, at this point,
05:43very aware of the federal presence.
05:45So, you'll be able to hear people following this SUV
05:51and a couple others in a convoy honking.
05:53These agents, Rico is popping his door now to go back
05:56and admonish...
05:57If you want to continue doing this
05:58and impeding our investigations, you won't be arrested.
06:00...a group of drivers who have been following them around.
06:03You can see that's another Bortar, Bortac agent,
06:06a tactical agent, dressed in their camouflage.
06:08That's another one right there from his unit.
06:10That's another one.
06:12This is Andy Chavez right here.
06:14They're admonishing these drivers not to follow them
06:16for impeding investigations.
06:18He's recording as well the backseat passenger.
06:20The feds are also to make sure to take note
06:21of license plates as well and send them
06:23to their Central Operations Command as well
06:25for intelligence on people following them.
06:27Right, because they've been, in some incidents,
06:29they've gotten people's license plate numbers
06:31and then they show up at their house
06:32as another form of intimidation against these
06:34ice watch groups and et cetera.
06:36That's right.
06:36And you can also see from the inside of this vehicle,
06:38their accoutrements, right?
06:39So, right here, this is an M4 rifle
06:42with holographic sight and a telescopic sight.
06:45Don't know why he has both sights on,
06:46but this is a military-grade weapon.
06:49It's equipped with a flash suppressor as well.
06:51Each BORTAC, BORSTAR agent,
06:53each one of these paramilitary agents
06:54has one of these rifles on him.
06:56They've each got three or four
06:57spare magazines on their vest.
06:59Mind you, this is Saturday morning.
07:01There is a children's Halloween parade
07:03about to happen on this street
07:05and they're doing civil immigration enforcement
07:07geared up like this, right?
07:09You can see at one point, a little bit forward,
07:13the agents stop.
07:14They hear something on the radio.
07:16Wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
07:18Andy, Andy.
07:19Doors, doors, doors.
07:20About a runner, right?
07:21So T. Rico pops his door,
07:23takes off sprinting after this man.
07:25So does Andy Chavez,
07:27whose body camera, by the way, is also rolling.
07:29Chavez tackles this man,
07:30a Latino man was running from federal agents,
07:33cuffs him up.
07:34Cuffs, cuffs, cuffs.
07:37And they're almost immediately surrounded
07:39by residents who are livid.
07:42They are, you know, screaming at them
07:43to get off their lawn.
07:44Where's your badge number?
07:45Mind you, this right here,
07:47that is Andy Chavez's unique identifier,
07:51Romeo Zulu 17.
07:52And that's how his other comrades know who he is, right?
07:58I mean, you can also hear them refer to each other
08:00on the audio of these body-worn cameras.
08:02And that's, you know, we go through the reports,
08:05we go through the footage, we listen to it,
08:08and that's the kind of groundwork we do
08:10in order to establish their identities.
08:12So you can see them cuff him up, right?
08:14This is what the immigration enforcement looks like.
08:18Get off my fucking property!
08:21Get off my property!
08:22Get off my property!
08:23So I think it's important to point out,
08:24this isn't just happening to this one guy
08:26who's having a knee on his neck.
08:29It's happening to this entire community,
08:30and this is not how ICE, how CBP, Border Patrol
08:34has typically engaged themselves.
08:36This is an intentional choice
08:38to terrorize everyone in this community.
08:41Yeah, I think it's worth noting, too, like,
08:43how upset people in this neighborhood got.
08:46Get off my property!
08:47Take your fucking mask off, coward!
08:49Take your mask off, you Nazi!
08:51You're good.
08:51They didn't see the feds apprehending these guys
08:54as the government coming to protect them
08:58and take dangerous people off their street.
09:00These sweeps are deeply unpopular.
09:02They're shredding communities apart,
09:03and for all we know right now,
09:06per the documentation that we've had through this lawsuit,
09:08this man doesn't have a criminal record.
09:11They are not going out for the worst of the worst,
09:12and they're using basically the equivalent
09:15of a military unit to do it.
09:17And it's important to point out,
09:19all these guys, all these Bortak agents
09:20that we can see in this video are all masked.
09:23None of these people know who these agents are.
09:25None of the people in the community know who the agents are,
09:28and they don't really have any way to find out.
09:30It's only through this lawsuit months after the fact
09:32that we've been able to identify some of these people,
09:35but nobody here has any path to recourse.
09:38They're just at the mercy of these agents,
09:40and they're all completely anonymous.
09:42Well, you can see them documenting the situation too,
09:45because they want to keep a record.
09:46They're trying to figure out who these people are,
09:49what's going on here.
09:50But again, in order to get some sort of recourse,
09:54civil or criminal or otherwise,
09:56you have to know who these folks are.
09:57And these E-Star reports, these use of force reports,
10:00are how we figured out that this video happens to be shot
10:04by Agent T. Rico, that Andy Chavez of Bortak,
10:08his Bortak collie was right next to him.
10:10But otherwise, residents on the street,
10:11when I called them up to interview them about this story
10:13and tell them about our findings,
10:14they had no clue who these folks were.
10:16So this encounter didn't end there,
10:19because this entire neighborhood was really,
10:21you can see that they're refusing to let the feds leave.
10:24They're furious.
10:25There's literally a guy in a back room.
10:27Don't try to be understanding.
10:29You guys are scaring our kids.
10:30Get out of here.
10:31Get out of my way.
10:32No, no, you shouldn't even be here, man.
10:34Saturday morning.
10:35Saturday morning, regular neighborhood.
10:36Right before a Halloween parade.
10:38And now things start to escalate.
10:40Border Patrol agents run ahead and make contact.
10:44This car stops behind them.
10:46This is a resident of the street named Michael Brosilo.
10:48He's pulled up behind them.
10:50He was out.
10:50He comes back from his training run.
10:52And you can see these agents rush up to him immediately,
10:54because they think he's trying to keep them in there.
10:56They're like, move your car.
10:57Move your car.
10:59Move your car.
10:59He's driving down the street.
11:01Move your fucking car.
11:01Get the fuck out of here.
11:02He's driving down the fucking street.
11:04He decides, he gets pissed off at them.
11:07He says, this is my street.
11:08What the fuck are you doing?
11:10And they're telling him to move his car.
11:11You can see a canister of tear gas has been popped
11:13already in the background.
11:14And now Brosilo gets taken to the ground by this agent, T Rico.
11:18Feel you got to throw me up.
11:20Get me up.
11:22Get the fuck out of here.
11:26And this agent is about six feet, almost 190 pounds.
11:30Pins the guy into the ground, has his knees on top of him.
11:33Get it a bit.
11:34Get it a bit.
11:35There is an Ice Watcher right there who's also getting taken
11:38to the ground.
11:38Her name's Maria Bryant.
11:40She and Michael Brosilo each have about half a dozen ribs
11:43broken during this encounter.
11:44And they were arrested for, quote unquote, impeding the federal agents, right?
11:48Not charged criminally.
11:49No charges were ever filed.
11:50But both of them had half a dozen ribs broken by these masked, heavily armed federal agents.
12:02Federal immigration agents, like many law enforcement officers, have a use of force protocol.
12:08They're supposed to kind of escalate in a very deliberate manner.
12:12In this, you see them going from yelling at this guy in his car to throwing him on the ground
12:17and breaking his ribs in just a matter of seconds.
12:19It's zero to 60.
12:20Yeah, and there's just, it doesn't seem like they're going through the protocol.
12:23And maybe they can claim, yeah, I told him three times and that's part of the protocol, et cetera.
12:27But it's very unlikely that anything is going to actually happen just because they escalated so quickly.
12:34Yeah, I mean, I think having watched so much body camera footage over the years,
12:38what stands out to me about these incidents is how fast these tactical agents go to force, right?
12:46And you can see this also in the secondary arrest that happens right behind in the background of this young
12:53woman, this ice washer.
12:54So from another, that agent who tackles her from behind, in his body camera video, in Javier Puente's body camera
13:00video,
13:01you can see him going up to her, shoving her forward and saying, why'd you hit him?
13:04Why'd you hit that officer?
13:06I found you, you hit him.
13:07You hit him.
13:08I found you, you hit him.
13:10Why'd you hit him?
13:11So now by saying that on his camera, it's for audio, he can take her to the ground and arrest
13:17her for assault,
13:18which he does and proceeds to severely injure her.
13:23And I think that to me is one thing that does help define why we see so many assault on
13:30officer incidences in these reports.
13:33In some cases, yes, they do get rocks thrown at them.
13:35In some cases, yes, people do throw punches at them.
13:37But in many instances, they are initiating the contact, right?
13:41They're the ones throwing the pepper spray.
13:42They're the ones pushing people back and then shoving them, hitting them again with batons,
13:47firing less lethal weapons at them, firing pepper balls at them.
13:51It's just a very rapid escalation of force.
13:57I can tell you from looking through these dozens of use of force reports over a very tight period in
14:03Chicago,
14:04the agents that we're talking about, the BORTAC and BORSTAR agents,
14:07they're overrepresented in the data set.
14:09They use force in more than 30% of the incidents,
14:11despite making up less than a quarter of all the total agents that we can see in the use of
14:17force incidents.
14:18And not only that, they occur within a really tight period.
14:21We're talking about some agents who use force five or six times in a matter of two months.
14:27That's considered extraordinarily high.
14:29Is it just a nature of people being angry about how immigration enforcement is going forth right now?
14:35So I think there's a few things happening here.
14:37The civil immigration enforcement is occurring in a completely different context than it has prior.
14:41Method of operation is designed to create tension and create conflict.
14:46I believe that's something the White House wants.
14:49However, at the same time, the units that we're seeing, they're not trained in de-escalation.
14:55They are trained to use force.
14:56They are trained to subdue.
14:57This is not a matter of units being under-trained.
15:00They do nothing but train.
15:01They're very well organized.
15:03They deploy out into a perimeter.
15:04They make space really well.
15:06I've shown these body camera videos to a number of veterans.
15:09And what they've said is like, yeah, that looks like how we treat a disabled vehicle
15:13if we'd wrecked out in Marja in Afghanistan, right?
15:16I think that speaks volumes.
15:18This is nothing like policing.
15:20The deal with Bortak and Borestar is that they are trained for contact.
15:24They have looser rules of engagement.
15:28They also don't have to go back into these communities and build relationships with people.
15:32And I think that's the biggest difference here is that a police department is ultimately accountable to their communities.
15:38With ICE, there's not that same consideration.
15:48Regardless of how you feel about U.S. immigration policy or how that policy is enforced, the fact of the
15:53matter is that every law in the United States is derived from the Constitution.
15:57The government gets its authority from the people.
15:59And if the government is deploying anonymous agents that are arresting people on the street without any due process, that
16:06puts these agents above the law and undermines the Constitution.
16:09It is for this reason that we decided we need to publish these names.
16:12This has been Incognito Mode.
16:14Until next time.
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