As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents led Sai Pavuluri out of his Northwest Side home in handcuffs, he turned to look at the camera crew recording his arrest.
He wore shorts and a T-shirt. His face offered no discernible expression.
Several feet away, Dr. Phil McGraw — a TV talk show host who, along with his camera crew, was embedded with Homeland Security agents as they launched an immigration blitz in the Chicago area on Sunday — opined on the arrest in keeping with his role of de facto spokesman for the operation.
In another video shared on social media, Pavuluri is shown sitting inside a black sedan as a federal agent opens the door and allows a reporter from the pro-Donald Trump website Frontline America to stick a microphone in the 31-year-old man’s face and question him. Pavuluri, who was born in India, explained he had been in prison since 2018, serving an eight-year sentence for a drunken driving incident that killed 20-year-old Mariyah Howard of Beecher.
He had been released from prison only 16 days earlier, according to Illinois Department of Correction records. Looking into the camera, he asked for a “fair chance” and pleaded for grace from no one in particular.
“I did something wrong,” said Pavuluri, who was in the country on a student visa at the time of the crash. “I’m sorry about what I did.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not released detailed information about its arrests this week, leaving Pavuluri’s detention as one of the few cases tacitly confirmed by the agency. With ICE refusing to say how many people were arrested locally or the reason for their detainment, curated videos have filled the void on social media and prop up the Trump administration’s so-far unverifiable claims that it is only going after felons.
In far south suburban Manteno, the video brought Wendy Howard to tears. She had been “torn” over President Trump’s deportation plan, she said, and worries in particular about how it will affect people with families and young children.
But Pavuluri, she says, is a different case.
He is responsible for her daughter’s death in the aforementioned DUI fatality on March 31, 2018. She says she has forgiven him, in part because God forgives people, but his actions are the reason she no longer enjoys holidays and why she had to move her mother into memory care alone.
“I don’t necessarily agree with (the mass deportation mission), but if he’s one of the first people to be picked up, then I do kind of agree with it,” Howard said. “We got justice.”
ICE has repeatedly refused to provide information about who has been arrested, making it impossible to know how many of those detained this week have felony records. Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters Tuesday that federal law enforcement told him more than 100 area residents had been apprehended in the blitz, but he did not know how many had committed serious crimes.
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has warned there could be “collateral” arrests during raids, and critics have accused agents of apprehending people who have no criminal record or have been clean for decades.
Pavuluri, however, has been convicted of a serious felony. And Howard’s reaction to his arrest reflects a complex view of mass deportations not easily expressed in campaign slogans or social media posts.
Through interviews and public records, the Tribune was able to determine how Pavuluri — who graduated from Governors State University in 2017 with a master’s degree in computer science — ended up in federal custody this week and how his victim’s family reacted to the news.
ICE did not respond to specific questions about Pavuluri’s case either, including whether he gave signed consent to being recorded and interviewed by either camera crew in keeping with agency policy.
Pavuluri declined to comment for this story through his wife, whom he married on Jan. 18. The couple live in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood with her children.
He is currently being held at the Clay County jail in Brazil, Indiana, along with other ICE detainees apprehended in this week’s immigration blitz.
Court records show Pavuluri was driving drunk in Chicago Heights on March 31, 2018, when he hit and killed Mariyah Howard, a nursing home assistant who loved cheerleading, and her dog, Minnie. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Pavuluri pleaded guilty to aggravated DUI with a fatality and was sentenced to eight years in the Department of Corrections. He served six years and nine months — about 85% of the sentence —before leaving prison in accordance with the earliest possible release under state law.
Illinois prison officials didn’t respond to questions about whether federal agents had requested prison officials turn Pavuluri over to them for deportation following the completion of his sentence.
Pavuluri was out of prison for about two weeks when federal agents arrested him.
Speaking into Frontline America’s microphone, Pavuluri said he felt he had “paid (his) time.”
“I deserve a fair chance,” he said. “I’m married here.”
Pavuluri had married just a few days before immigration agents came to his door, his new wife said when reached by phone. The pair had gotten to know one another through continuing education courses he’d taken while still in prison and through monitored weekend visits, she said. Their first priority following his release and their marriage was getting him a green card and starting their life together.
His wife said that when they first discussed his conviction, Pavuluri asked if she thought he was “a terrible person.”
“I said, ‘I don’t think you’re a terrible person,’” she said. “‘You made a bad mistake. And I think that the rest of your life should be working your way up to reflect that this is not who you are.’”
The Prisoner Review Board declined to comment on Pavuluri’s case.
But in a 2021 letter to the board’s Executive Clemency Department, Wendy Howard recounted how she screamed and collapsed on the police department floor when told of her daughter’s death. Mariyah, who had wanted to become a certified nursing assistant, had been driving home with her seat belt on in her own lane at the time of the accident, her mother said.
She told the board she did not want to see Pavuluri walk free before his sentence was up. Indeed, she did not believe him when he wrote of his remorse from prison. Her life, she said, had been all but ruined by her daughter’s death.
“I want to know why after my victim impact statement was read in court he showed no remorse at that time,” she wrote.
A day after Pavuluri’s arrest, Howard was perplexed by the publicity around it.
“What Dr. Phil was doing with this situation was beyond me,” she said.
But after she watched the video of Pavuluri’s detention, she said she was glad the TV psychologist was broadcasting arrests.
On Tuesday, she wanted to know what the odds were that Pavuluri would be deported.
