CICERO, Ill.—Ricardo Mendez, a 27-year-old Puerto Rican security guard, figured he was just doing the right thing when he whipped out his phone on October 28.

Masked agents in unmarked SUVs had rolled into the Menards parking lot here, and within minutes they were swinging batons at a white Ford pickup’s windows.

Glass exploded. A Hispanic man inside got yanked out, cuffed, and stuffed into a red van. One agent even flipped Mendez the bird for filming the whole thing.

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By the end of his shift, Mendez was out of a job. “I saw them coming and started recording—to do my part,” Mendez told The Daily Beast.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has been begging residents to document these sweeps ever since “Operation Midway Blitz” kicked off in September, turning Chicago-area lots and streets into hunting grounds for federal immigration teams.

Mendez, who’d been posted at the store door for two years through contractor O’Brien & Associates, says his boss ordered him inside mid-video. He refused. Other employees filmed too, but managers allegedly demanded they scrub the clips or else.

Mendez held onto his. Hours later, a termination letter cited “insubordination,” claiming he abandoned his post, argued with an ICE agent, “almost [got] pepper-sprayed,” and told the site manager “Make me” when ordered home.

“Would I do it again? Yes, I would,” Mendez said. The fired guard’s footage rocketed across Reddit and TikTok, lighting a fuse under the Wisconsin-based chain.

Menards Faces Overwhelming Scrutiny

On r/wisconsin, one thread titled “Wisconsin-based Menards is collaborating with ICE—Calling for a boycott” racked up 4,200 upvotes and hundreds of comments vowing to skip the big-box aisles.

Another post on r/illinois showed Mendez’s pink slip with the caption “Menards Terminated Security Guard Who Documented ICE Arrest,” pulling in 3,800 upvotes and fresh boycott pledges.

Shoppers chimed in fast. “Well Menards just lost my business,” one wrote on The Nerd Stash, echoing dozens of others who said they’d pivot to Home Depot or Lowe’s.

A Fat City Feed piece quoted a Redditor: “This is outrageous—punishing an employee for filming a public act by law enforcement?”

Menards’ billionaire owner, John Menard Jr., has poured millions into GOP causes and advised Trump on economic reopening in 2020, per OpenSecrets and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Neither the chain nor O’Brien returned calls for comment. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the detainee, Santos Mena-Flores, “a criminal illegal alien from Mexico” with priors for domestic battery and aggravated DUI.

She said he refused to open his door, agitators surrounded the truck, and he reversed—prompting agents to smash the glass when they feared being run over. No tear gas was used, she insisted.

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The Bigger Blitz

Tuesday’s smash-and-grab was just one ripple in a wave crashing across Chicagoland. Since September, Border Patrol has eclipsed ICE in “Midway Blitz,” snatching hundreds in parking lots, apartments, and even a kids’ Halloween parade.

A federal judge temporarily barred tear gas and pepper balls after agents allegedly broke a 67-year-old man’s ribs; Commander Gregory Bovino now has to show up in court nightly with use-of-force logs—though an appeal paused the body-cam order.

Earlier raids hit the same Cicero Menards lot, plus nearby Walmart and Home Depot spots. In late September, masked teams detained day laborers outside big-box stores; one clip showed agents chasing a man through a Starbucks drive-thru.

The TRiiBE reported 37 arrests in a single South Shore apartment blitz, complete with flash-bangs.

When Filming Costs Your Paycheck

Mendez’s pink slip lands smack in a chilling trend: private companies punishing workers for shining light on federal muscle. In California, labor lawyers say bosses can’t legally fire someone just because ICE showed up.

Nationwide, ICE has leaned on store lots as staging areas, and some chains stay mum—or worse. That silence is the point, critics say. When a guard loses his livelihood for 42 seconds of cellphone video, the message to every cashier, stocker, and lot attendant is crystal: look away.

Delete the evidence. Let the vans roll out unseen. That’s not security—it’s complicity.

And in a country where courts still say you can film cops in public, getting canned for it smells like the quiet kind of strong-arming that turns “land of the free” into a punchline.

If a billionaire donor’s store can erase oversight with a single HR letter, what’s stopping the next employer—or the next raid—from doing the same?

Mendez is job-hunting now. His clip is still up. And every share, every boycott pledge, is one more reminder that some fires start with a single spark—and a guy who wouldn’t hit delete.

Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity

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