The final hearings of Illinois’ commission examining this fall’s federal immigration crackdown opened Monday with testimony from the mother of Katie Abraham, the 20-year-old whose death the Trump administration seized on to justify the federal operation.

In October, Gov JB Pritzker launched the commission — which has no direct law enforcement powers — to scrutinize federal immigration agents’ actions during the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz earlier this fall. The packed hearing room inside the Michael A. Bilandic Building in downtown Chicago was expected to see hours of video and witness testimony detailing the monthslong aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

Abraham was killed in a drunken driving accident by an immigrant without permanent legal status. The Trump administration repeatedly cited her death in pursuing the federal crackdown.

“You may have heard her name, not because of the compassionate, caring person that she was… You’ve probably heard her name because Operation Midway Blitz was named in her honor,” Denise Lorence, Abraham’s mother, said Monday. “This is what my family has been dragged into.” 

Abraham’s father, Joe Abraham, supported the Trump administration’s actions as they drew attention to his daughter’s death. Lorence wrote in the Tribune in October that her daughter would not have wanted her name used as it was, and she has largely avoided other public appearances.

“I wouldn’t wish the emotional turmoil that I’ve experienced on anyone,” Lorence said Monday.

During the fall operation, federal agents arrested thousands of immigrants, most without a criminal record, and repeatedly deployed tear gas and pepper spray on protesters, including U.S. citizens and children. 

“This is not hyperbole. This is the evidence. This is Operation Midway Blitz,” Patricia Brown Holmes, vice chair of the Illinois Accountability Commission, said as she opened the hearing on Monday. “The federal government has consistently failed to deliver accountability, and culpable agents are still roaming our streets.”

Hamstrung by the state’s limited authority to restrict federal immigration agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, Pritzker said in launching the commission that it would serve as a way to collect and preserve evidence that could be used by a future Congress or presidential administration, or in potential legal proceedings. 

The commission, headed by former federal Judge Rubén Castillo, released its preliminary report in December, laying out issues it hoped to address, such as limiting agents’ use of tear gas, pepper spray and identity-concealing masks. The report said, for example, it would want to improve “existing federal standards for use of crowd control weapons.” 

However, the report offered little insight into how those goals would be accomplished, saying only that it would be interested to hear . The commission has no subpoena power. 

Even before “Operation Midway Blitz” launched on Sept. 8, Pritzker had asked Illinoisans to record and share ICE and Border Patrol activity.

Prior to the accountability commission’s activities, some videos people took were used in announcing Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office’s case that obtained a federal judge’s temporary restraining order holding off the Trump administration from commanding National Guard troops onto city and suburban streets. The videos also have helped other state officials, activists and journalists keep track of federal officials’ actions in neighborhoods, even as the agents themselves remain largely masked and anonymous.