A security guard working at a superstore owned by an ally of Donald Trump was fired after filming a brutal Department of Homeland Security immigration raid in its parking lot.
Ricardo Mendez was positioned at the door of Menards—a Midwestern chain of home-improvement stores whose billionaire owner, John Menard Jr., is a GOP megadonor—in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois, when agents deployed by DHS arrived on Tuesday afternoon.
Like so many in the city since “Operation Midway Blitz” began in September, Mendez had been “on the lookout” since federal immigration officers “started taking over,” he told the Daily Beast.
When he saw the masked officers in unmarked vehicles drive into the lot, Mendez decided to pull out his cameraphone and start recording—“to do my part,” he said—as Illinois governor JB Pritzker has repeatedly asked people.
What came next was brutal, as the Puerto Rican security guard filmed two Border Patrol agents smashing the window of a white Ford pickup with their batons.
“The poor guy was surrounded by agents, workers, and customers,” said Mendez, 27, who added that the incident was so dramatic and shocking that other store staff also came out to film.
The officers then pulled out a Hispanic man before handcuffing him, and bundling him into an unmarked red vehicle.
After the man was detained, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in a separate unmarked blue Chevy Tahoe threatened to tear-gas anyone who intervened, Mendez says, before they all drove out of the lot as one ICE officer can be seen in his video flipping him the bird.
But despite Mendez having done what he believed any good citizen should have, he says a supervisor “sent me home” after Mendez objected to his superior’s demands to stop filming and go back to his position at the shop door.
Mendez, who claims that Menards’ bosses demanded store staff who had filmed the episode delete their footage, was then fired altogether the same day, according to a termination notice obtained by the Beast.
The letter from security contractor O’Brien & Associates—which provides security staff to Menards—cites “insubordination” and claims Mendez left his “designated post,” argued with an “ICE employee,” and “almost [got] pepper-sprayed.”
It states that he then returned to the lot twice against instructions, and when sent home, he told his site manager, “Make me.”
The letter says: “You are terminated as of Tuesday October 28th, 2025.”
Mendez disputes some of what his former company says, claiming managers had previously insisted the lot was private property and off-limits to immigration operations.
Having worked at the store for two years and now seeking a new job, he was unrepentant. “Would I do it again? Yes, I would,” Mendez said.
Menards is owned by John Menard Jr., a long-time Republican donor who has bankrolled conservative causes and worked with Donald Trump to advise on economic reopening in 2020, according to Urban Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s summary of his giving to GOP-aligned groups. Federal contribution records show that Menards-linked donations flow overwhelmingly to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.
Since September, “Operation Midway Blitz” has seen the growth of hard-edged Border Patrol actions in and around Chicago, which have increasingly overshadowed ICE’s presence in the city, as the Trump administration escalates more widespread raids to increase deportation tallies.
Their actions have drawn blistering judicial scrutiny following tear-gas and pepper-ball deployments in residential areas and at a children’s Halloween parade. Agents allegedly broke a 67-year-old man’s ribs during the fracas.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino to appear in court every evening and turn over use-of-force files, although this has been paused pending appeal. Barack Obama-appointed Sara Ellis also told Bovino he must wear a body camera.
The Daily Beast contacted Menards and O’Brien & Associates for comment twice on Thursday. Neither had responded by the time of publication.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the arrest had been part of a “targeted immigration enforcement operation,” which led to the arrest of Santos Mena-Flores, “a criminal illegal alien from Mexico with previous arrests for domestic battery, aggravated DUI, and violating a restraining order for assault.”
She said that Mena-Flores had “refused to comply with lawful commands to open his door during the operation, agitators started surrounding the vehicle, yelling profanities at agents and blowing whistles.
“Mena-Flores then started backing up his vehicles and officers fearing they would be run over, broke the vehicle’s window and placed him under arrest.”
McLaughlin added that Border Patrol “did not deploy any crowd control measures.”
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