It’s been nearly a year since Greg Bovino and his throng of border patrol agents clad in green bulletproof vests gathered in the wee hours of the day in front of The Bean on an icy November morning in Chicago. ICE had just wrapped up Operation Midway Blitz, a 64-day campaign where Chicago endured moments of tear gas, harassment by federal agents, and gunfire. It was the prelude to the January 2026 slayings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge.
ICE continues to seize U.S. residents from all walks of life, subjecting them to reported beatings and other mistreatments while in detention. It could be a tamale vendor from Chicago or a minor league baseball coach in Texas. Agents proceed with what Bovino described to the Chicago Tribune as their “legal, ethical, moral mission.” Case in point: A chef from a prominent Chicago bar, and his wife, were detained on Tuesday, July 21 at Newark Liberty International Airport on their way back to Chicago after watching Argentina lose in the FIFA World Cup Final on July 19 at Giants Stadium.
Federal records showed chef Carlos Cantatore and his wife, Gabi Guidara, were being held at Delaney Detention Center in New Jersey. Cantatore says that seven days later, on July 28, ICE separated him from his wife after flying him from the Delaney Detention Center in New Jersey to a facility in Louisiana. Federal records showed Cantatore was again transferred in August to Arizona, where he’s currently being held. During his detention across three time zones, Cantatore’s says he contracted COVID, lost 30 pounds, and has been barred from talking with his wife. Guidara is now back in Argentina, according to a family friend. Her departure from Newark was confirmed by ICE's online detainee locator system.
The Department of Homeland Security did not return a request for comment.
The couple are die-hard Argentine soccer fans, often following matches while in the kitchen at La Licor Panamericana, a Latin American restaurant and bar in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Previously, Cantatore worked at Ummo, a popular Italian restaurant in Downtown Chicago. The chef gained a reputation for his diligence and a drive for perfection among his colleagues who say that he remains committed to his job, even in detention. He’s had phone conversations with colleagues from La Licor, directing them in his absence to ensure the kitchen is running properly. The restaurant is currently gearing up for La Licor Fest, a celebration of Latin American cocktail culture which features guest bartenders from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and more.
Nobody really cares about what you’ve done and the work. Everything is erased immediately and your life is completely changed.
Cantatore spoke to Ravenous in Spanish via phone on August 6 from the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana. There’s untold mental anguish in fighting the system, Cantatore says, and that he’s been warned if he loses his case “there’s no possibility” that he’ll “be permitted to return” to America. He adds “he’s limited in what I can do,” as he and his wife don’t have the $15,000 per person necessary to fight their deportations in court. The two have elected to voluntarily depart, and family members say that while ICE agents quickly cleared Guidara’s deportation back to Buenos Aires, Cantatore awaits approval, as his hearings have been pushed back multiple times.
Ravenous reviewed the couple’s asylum application, filed in December 2024, which shows that Cantatore’s visa expired in 2023 and Guidara’s expired in 2024. Cantatore says he and his wife don’t have criminal records. They applied for asylum in December 2024. Immigrants are generally protected from deportation while awaiting a decision on their asylum application, even if their past visas have expired. A general rule of thumb is immigrants should apply for asylum within a year of entering the country, but their attorneys can argue for exceptions in the case of exceptional or changed circumstances, such as health concerns, a lack of notice, or being a victim of a crime.
However, there have been several changes to immigration law in recent years, including the ongoing battle over the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule, which banned undocumented migrants crossing over from the southern border from seeking asylum. Immigration attorneys tell Ravenous that legal challenges from the Trump administration make it challenging to keep up with current policies and prepare a defense for their clients, no matter where in America they may reside.
“I feel like we've taken a lot of precautions to make sure that people feel safe and that they have information that they need, and you know we're networked,” says Mónica Ramirez, an activist and human rights attorney, who has worked specifically to protect the rights of farmworker and low-wage immigrant women. She’s been vocal about the fears farmworkers have over Trump’s increased raids and advised fellow attorneys representing immigrants in court.
Cantatore arrived in America in 2020, working for restaurants in Miami, and Guidara arrived stateside in 2023. They were married in January 2025. Cantatore was very matter of fact about his situation over the phone and had this piece of advice for other immigrants in America.
They come out of there mentally and psychologically broken. There is an ‘after,’ and that ‘after’ is going to be very hard. I know that I have to be strong to help them.
“It’s very important to be careful and to be more on top of things if they’re going through the legal process to have their paperwork legally in this country,” Cantatore says over the phone from Louisiana. “If they’re going through that process, be more careful because if they catch them, like they caught me, nobody cares. Nobody really cares about what you’ve done and the work. Everything is erased immediately and your life is completely changed.”
Cantatore has been able to make phone calls while detained, and has spoken to the co-owner of La Licor, Abraham Ramirez. Ramirez recalls his chef’s high standards, elevating La Licor’s menu to new heights. The experience of working across Latin America, including in Lima and Buenos Aires, proved beneficial to La Licor’s multicultural menu: “He always wanted to improve everything, techniques, dishes,” Ramirez says.
Abraham Ramirez heard the news of Cantatore’s arrest while in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, the annual gathering that brings bar professionals together across the country. Without family in Chicago, Cantatore has tasked Ramirez with cleaning out the couple’s apartment, selling any belongings, and sending any proceeds to Argentina where they’ll restart their lives.
While coping with feelings of heartache and uncertainty, Mariana Guidara prepares her Buenos Aires apartment for her sister and brother-in-law’s arrivals from America. Over a video call, she says in Spanish that the Argentinian government lacks resources when it comes to American detainees — there’s a “coldness when dealing with family” from Argentine consulates in different American cities. Her sister returned to Argentina with only have the belongings in her backpack, including a lone sweatshirt. Stateside, friends and family established a GoFundMe for the two (whose legal names are Gonzolo Carlos Jimeno and Gabriela Analia Guidara). It’s one of thousands of fundraisers for ICE detainees: “I just want to hug them and see them again,” Mariana says.
Every time her sister calls she’s in tears, Mariana adds of Gabi's time in detention, noting that they were only able to speak via brief, recorded calls. Gabi has told Mariana that she and her husband thought they were safe traveling to New York, and that they had the necessary paperwork to travel. Gabi told her sister that they consulted an immigration attorney who gave them the greenlight for the trip. While in the detention center, Gabi teold her sister she didn't have enough food or medicine, eating just one cup of soup a day.
A select handful within Chicago’s Latin American culinary community know about chef Cantatore and his wife’s plight. One of them is Marcos Carbajal whose father founded Chicago’s legendary Mexican restaurant, Carnitas Uruapan. He’s hesitated to speak out since the fall of 2025 when Operation Midway Blitz began in Chicago, when business at his three restaurants fell between 20% to 40%. Many of those in targeted communities worry about retaliation if they speak publicly. One of Carbajal’s restaurants, which opened on January 27, 2025 in Little Village — one of Chicago’s largest Mexican communities — was particularly impacted. Carbajal says he would have delayed the opening if he knew what Trump’s White House had planned. ICE continued to move the goalposts. What was supposed to be a six-week campaign starting in September wrapped up in December.
“You're familiar with restaurants and their margins — we're not meant to absorb hits that big,” Carbajal says. “So it was really a struggle. Managing people's emotions and fear was a challenge, not knowing when it's going to end.”
Carbajal is aware that his restaurants — in Little Village, Pilsen, and Gage Park — reside in neighborhoods most likely to see ICE activity. For folks outside those communities, it may seem like the worst is past. They are wrong. “I think everybody's in their silo and it's very easy to ignore without this being in the headlines anymore, and without Gregory Bovino parading down Michigan Avenue or parading down 26th Street and having these big clashes with protesters,” Carbajal says. “That's where it starts moving into this silent but deadly killer. It doesn't quite make the headlines, and I think that's the way this is done by design.”
We can't normalize this — there's nothing normal about rounding up people and sending them away for no reason, as far as I can see. It doesn't serve anything about this country or help.
Immigration raids aren’t anything new for America, and activists like Mónica Ramirez have been raising alarms while emboldening the Latin American community for decades. Ramirez is the founder of Justice For Migrant Women and the Raizado Festival, and her actions have spotlit farmers, bartenders, and restaurant workers from her hometown of Fremont, Ohio. Raizado was born after the pandemic, to recognize the disproportionate losses to the Latine community due to COVID. The James Beard Foundation recognized Ramirez’s efforts in 2022 with a leadership award.
“What we're seeing in terms of immigration enforcement over the past year and a half, is that it's really more racial profiling than it is immigration enforcement,” says Ramirez. “So it doesn't matter if you are a U.S. citizen and you happen to be Latina or you happen to be of a different ethnicity, or simply looking like you are an immigrant — whatever that means. That is making you subject to potential additional interviewing or screening or even detention.”
For the last four years, Raizado has taken place annually in Aspen, Colorado with an intentional choice to hold the event in front of an affluent audience while celebrating the hospitality workers who make up the backbone of the resort town. One of the festival’s highlights was its Community Day when they invited locals — including many who work in the hospitality industry. Community Day often drew about 1,000 visitors. But last year, organizers cancelled Community Day to protect attendees. The event won’t return in 2026. “I thought it was a great opportunity to build something free and beautiful for the community,” says Ramirez. “And that's what we saw in the first couple of years. But unfortunately now with the situation with immigration, it just isn't safe for us to do it.”
Gabi and Cantatore aren’t the only members of Chicago’s culinary world that have faced deportation. In June, bartender Nicola Tolosa — another Argentinian immigrant — was detained by ICE in July. A GoFundMe campaign details Tolosa’s story while raising more than $37,000. Tolosa lost their court battle and was deported in July. When reached in August, Tolosa tells Ravenous they had just gotten a cell phone while rebuilding their lives in Argentina.
I think everybody's in their silo and it's very easy to ignore without this being in the headlines anymore, and without Gregory Bovino parading down Michigan Avenue or parading down 26th Street and having these big clashes with protesters.
Lemon, a cocktail bar in Chicago, hosted a fundraiser and helped raise $4,000 for Tolosa’s legal fees. Lemon co-owners Seth Blumenthal and Mason McIntire say they were overwhelmed by the support of Chicago’s bar community while echoing what many said about the environment of fear experienced by the immigrants. But Blumenthal also spoke about the financial impact on the hospitality industry, describing it as a “mood business.”
“When people are not feeling as good about themselves or the place they live or the environment, then it can impact their willingness to go out and spend money,” Blumenthal adds.
McIntire adds: “We can't normalize this — there's nothing normal about rounding up people and sending them away for no reason, as far as I can see. It doesn't serve anything about this country or help.”
McIntire and Blumenthal say there’s only so much a bar can do to support its neighborhood, while pointing to organizations like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who do more for their communities. Given the thin margins, actions like the one-day national strike, held on January 30, 2026, felt precarious for some immigrant-owned restaurants. That day social media was filled with restaurant owners justifying their reasons for not participating, but Carbajal readily admits to feeling vulnerable as a Mexican American, and kept his restaurants open. Ramirez says folks shouldn’t be quick to judge: “I want to encourage people to activate and engage where they can and how they can. Does it help? Does it hurt? I think that for me, one of the most dangerous things is when we go silent, right?”
Mariana Guidara remained composed until the end of our conversation, when she began wiping tears from her eyes. She trembled slightly while speaking in Spanish about her sister and brother in law.
“I also wanted to say — and if it can be conveyed — that it’s not only what they lost economically,” she says. “They come out of there mentally and psychologically broken. There is an ‘after,’ and that ‘after’ is going to be very hard. I know that I have to be strong to help them.”
Meanwhile, Cantatore seems resigned to his fate, wanting to see his wife again and start over in Argentina. His former boss at La Licor called him a workaholic, someone who is always tinkering in the kitchen and searching for ways to create delicious food. Cantatore is focused on his future in Buenos Aires.
“I’m already thinking about how my restaurant in Argentina would look,” he says. “I’m not going to stop, and nothing is going to stop me.”
Stories like this take time, patience, and resources. Ravenous wants to show the world that food journalism is about more than "best of" lists, but we need paid subscriptions to support our mission. Please disrupt the media dystopia and subscribe today.
