Standing before a federal judge in Chicago’s Loop, Eva Gurtovaia took her oath of allegiance to the United States. She was now officially a citizen, a moment she and her husband, Enes Abak, had been looking forward to for months.
Loved ones filled the courtroom. None, though, was hers. Abak couldn’t be there to watch.
No, he was across state lines in federal custody.
Thirty hours before Gurtovaia took her oath, Abak was headed to work when federal immigration agents detained him, Gurtovaia, 38, told the Tribune. Though Abak didn’t yet have legal status, the 29-year-old was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a hearing in immigration court set for early next year. He and Gurtovaia had been building toward their future together — had been planning to start a family — and were taking painstaking care to ensure that future would be in Chicago.
The couple even breathed a sigh of relief as the immigration blitz that had wracked the city and its suburbs for months started to wind down. U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and his agents moved on to other cities. Maybe they didn’t have to stress anymore, at least for a while, Gurtovaia thought.
But then the crackdown came to their door anyway.
A framed picture of Enes Abak and Eva Gurtovaia sits on a television stand at their home in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago on Nov. 26, 2025. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
“He’s my best friend,” Gurtovaia recalled in an interview Wednesday night, sitting in her and Abak’s dimly lit Uptown apartment. Beside her, their two cats jumped and paced over their couch and coffee table, now and then rubbing against a picture frame of the couple. “He’s everything.”
Abak’s detention is a sign that the government’s immigrant enforcement has not fully vanished despite Bovino’s exit.
Abak had left for work around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. For the past couple of months, the Kurdish immigrant had been working as a manager at an auto repair shop. Before that, he primarily relied on delivering DoorDash and GrubHub orders for an income, Gurtovaia said. Abak had a work authorization card valid through January 2029, according to the work permit issued to him, as viewed by the Tribune.
That day, Abak only got as far as his car when federal agents quickly detained him and drove away, according to Gurtovaia.
The 46th Ward office, in a community alert posted to social media Tuesday, stated it had received reports of officers wearing uniforms labeled “ICE” detaining someone in Uptown earlier that morning. Per witnesses, officers were observed “moving through the alley and garden areas” of the 4600 block of North Kenmore Avenue, according to the alert.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.
Even before she knew her husband had been detained, Gurtovaia had a feeling something was wrong when he didn’t call her that Tuesday as he always did when he arrived at work.
Instead, he called her from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview.
“He told me that they took him,” Gurtovaia remembered. Then he told her to be strong and to take care of herself. “We don’t understand why they took him.”
Ald. Angela Clay, 46th, right, congratulates Eva Gurtovaia, center, on her naturalization as a U.S. citizen as Eleana Molise, 46th Ward director of housing and community service, looks on Nov. 26, 2025, in Chicago. Gurtovaia’s husband, who has a pending asylum case, was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Uptown the day before. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
Immigration attorneys have previously told the Tribune that, despite pending asylum hearings, work authorization or temporary protected status applications, if someone entered the country illegally or is without granted status, they have no protections from immigration enforcement under a second Trump administration — even as they seek to stay in the U.S. through legal avenues.
In 2022, Abak immigrated to the United States from Turkey. He was released on parole by immigration officials and given a court date in May of this year, Gurtovaia said.
For more than 40 years, a conflict between militants and state forces has continued in Turkey, spreading beyond the country’s borders into Iraq and Syria and killing tens of thousands of people. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party — which is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union — launched the armed insurgency in 1984.
The Kurds are among the largest stateless ethnic groups in the world, with some 30 million concentrated in a territory straddling Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They are a minority in each country and have often suffered persecution, which has fueled armed Kurdish uprisings.
Abak, who is Kurdish, fled Turkey for political asylum, Gurtovaia said.
His next hearing in Chicago’s immigration court was set for Jan. 13, according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
“He was just working hard,” Gurtovaia said.
Gurtovaia, an immigrant herself, came to the U.S. eight years ago after winning a green card lottery in 2017. Born and raised in Russia, Gurtovaia, who is half Ukrainian and half Belarusian, decided to leave her home country after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, she said.
Ald. Angela Clay, 46th, left, embraces Eva Gurtovaia, 38, after Gurtovaia’s naturalization as a U.S. citizen on Nov. 26, 2025, at Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago. Gurtovaia’s husband, who has a pending asylum case, was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Uptown the day before. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
After both landing in Chicago, Gurtovaia and Abak met in April 2023 through Facebook dating. Gurtovaia said she fell in love with him immediately. A year and a half later, they got married on Nov. 15, 2024. In the months since, they’ve been trying to save money for fertility treatment to start their family, Gurtovaia said.
They had also been saving up so Gurtovaia could apply to become a naturalized citizen. A naturalized spouse opens up the possibility of an immediate relative visa, which enables someone to get a lawful “green card” status sooner without needing to go through the rigors of the asylum process, according to Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Becoming a citizen also posed an extra level of security, Gurtovaia said.
“I consider this place as my home, but before the change of administration, I didn’t feel like I had to be in a rush to file for my citizenship,” Gurtovaia said. “But since things have changed completely.”
Gurtovaia didn’t sleep well through Operation Midway Blitz. She’d wake up at 3 or 4 a.m., hear a sound and think to herself, “Oh my God, it’s ICE.” Abak didn’t work for more than a month because he was scared, Gurtovaia said. But when the monthslong mass deportation mission started to move elsewhere, the couple relaxed.
“Maybe we can celebrate Thanksgiving … (and) sleep peacefully without shaking,” Gurtovaia recalled herself wondering.
A picture of Enes Abak and Eva Gurtovaia is held by magnets on the refrigerator at their home in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago on Nov. 26, 2025. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
In a statement to the Tribune, Brandon Lee, communications director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, emphasized that although the blitz has wound down, immigration enforcement persists.
“While Bovino and his henchmen have moved on to terrorize other cities, ICE activity continues in Chicago and the suburbs,” he stated. “Illinoisians must remain vigilant and continue looking out for their neighbors.”
Through her naturalization ceremony on Wednesday, all Gurtovaia could think about was Abak. As of Wednesday night, Abak was in ICE custody at a detention facility in El Paso, Texas, according to ICE detainee records online.
“I felt so sad,” she said. “How can it be that I’m here, and he’s in the detention center? We are the same. … The only difference is that I got my luck, and he didn’t.”
The Tribune’s Adriana Perez and The Associated Press contributed.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/28/immigration-chicago-blitz-ice-deportation-uptown/
