Texas National Guard troops arrived in Illinois on Tuesday amid mounting judicial scrutiny of the federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.
The escalation of the federal government’s law enforcement presence came the same day a federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated a federal consent decree when arresting 22 undocumented immigrants without warrants earlier this year.
That ruling came a day before a federal grand jury took the rare step of declining to indict two protestors that federal prosecutors had charged with resisting and assaulting federal officers.
And it came the same day a federal judge released two individuals — one of whom was shot by ICE — as they await trial for allegedly assaulting officers. In the hearing that led to their pretrial release, one of the defendants’ attorney said body-camera footage contradicts the government’s narrative that the protestors had rammed their vehicles.
Illinois and Chicago’s lawsuit against the deployment of federal troops to the city, meanwhile, is scheduled for a hearing Thursday as federal courts increasingly become the state’s main front for resistance to federal shows of force.
Read more: Illinois sues to block Trump’s National Guard deployment to Chicago | Judge won’t block federal troop deployment to Chicago — for now
Violation of consent decree
A Chicago federal judge this week found that ICE violated a consent decree when it arrested at least 22 individuals without warrants earlier this year.
The ruling, published Tuesday, extended the consent decree that limits immigration agents’ authority to make warrantless arrests until February and the judge ordered ICE to re-issue rules on probable cause to agents nationwide.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings agreed with immigrant and civil rights groups that faulted ICE’s new policy of having agents carry blank warrant forms and fill them out at the scene of an arrest. The judge ruled the use of what are known as I-200 warrants is “explicitly designed” to get around the requirement that agents have probable cause before arresting an undocumented immigrant.
Cummings pointed to last week’s raid on an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood as an example of the harms of bypassing probable cause. In the early hours of Sept. 30, roughly 300 federal agents — including some who landed a Black Hawk helicopter on the roof — stormed the building, eventually arresting more than three dozen people.
DHS claimed it was targeting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, but the chaotic raid and hourslong detentions extended to American citizens, who were primarily Black. According to news accounts of the incident, armed agents broke down doors at the 130-unit building, handcuffing dozens of adults and children alike with zip ties and detaining them in unmarked vans.
The judge noted a recent concurring opinion from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote that although “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” for immigration actions, it can be a “relevant factor.” The justice went on to write that based on reasonable suspicion, “immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status,” but that U.S. citizens or other legal residents “will be free to go after the brief encounter.”
But Cummings said that theoretical view clashed with the real-world incident last week.
“One thing seems clear: ICE rousted American citizens from their apartments during the middle of the night and detained them — in zip ties no less — for far longer than the ‘brief’ period authorized by the operative regulation,” the judge wrote in a footnote.
Settlement dates back to 2022
The Department of Homeland Security had agreed to the settlement under the Biden administration in 2022, stemming from allegations of improper ICE arrests during the first Trump administration. The three-year consent decree was supposed to have expired in May, but immigrant and civil rights advocates had asked for an extension.
That was supposed to have left the settlement in place as the judge weighed the arguments.
But in June, a top ICE lawyer emailed all agency employees advising the consent decree was dead and officially rescinding corresponding agency policy restricting warrantless arrests.
Cummings declined to extend the consent decree another three years, as the immigrant and civil rights groups requested, but ruled it could be extended until Feb. 2.
But the judge also found ICE had been violating the consent decree since at least January and February, when agents arrested at least 22 undocumented immigrants without warrants in Chicago and Missouri. Cummings narrowly confined his ruling to the 22 cases the immigrant and civil rights groups detailed in court filings and ordered their conditions of release be lifted.
Cummings also ordered ICE to provide arrest documentation for all those detained since June 11.
Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants who have criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens.
Immigration and civil rights groups last week alleged ICE has improperly arrested nearly 100 people since Operation Midway Blitz began last month in Chicago and its suburbs, including a family driving to church and grandmother who’s been in the U.S. for more than two decades and works at a laundromat to support her grandchild.
Cummings ordered ICE to report warrantless arrests monthly and to meet with plaintiffs “to resolve the alleged violations consistent with the rulings in this decision” before a hearing scheduled for mid-November.
ICE narrative scrutiny
Judges have also shown increased scrutiny of the federal government’s narratives surrounding recent arrests and altercations. Immigration agents shot a woman, Marimar Martinez, in Chicago on Saturday.
DHS officials alleged Martinez had a gun in her car and drove toward officers before they opened “defensive” fire. A lawyer for Martinez told a judge that body-camera footage contradicts that narrative and shows an officer shouting “do something b----,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. After the shooting, Martinez drove to a car shop where employees treated her wounds before paramedics arrived, according to the paper.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Heather McShain released Martinez and another defendant, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, as they await trial on felony charges that they assaulted a federal officer. The judge cited the individuals’ lack of criminal history and strong community and family ties in ordering their release.
The Chicago Sun-Times also previously obtained body-camera footage of another ICE shooting that contradicted DHS’ initial narrative. ICE agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas González on Sept. 12 in suburban Franklin Park after he allegedly fled a traffic stop and struck an officer with his car. DHS initially said the agent was “seriously injured.”
Body-camera footage showed the agent and his partner telling local police their injuries were “nothing major.” One agent said he was “dragged a little bit” by Gonzalez’s car and his blue jeans were bloodied and torn, while his partner suffered hand lacerations and a knee injury, according to the Sun-Times.
Grand jury issues rare ‘no bill’
On Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes formally dropped charges against two protestors after a grand jury took the rare step of declining an indictment sought by the feds, according to the Sun-Times.
Ray Collins and Jocelyne Robledo are a married couple who faced charges of assaulting and resisting officers. At the time of their arrest, they legally possessed loaded guns but did not brandish them at authorities.
Authorities alleged in court documents that Robledo “pushed back” agents who were controlling the crowd of protestors at an ICE facility in suburban Broadview. Collins saw his wife being detained, then allegedly yelled and charged at agents. The documents say an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly injured his thumb in the scuffle.
Bloomberg Law reported that a grand jury returning no bill of indictment is an extremely rare occurrence, as the grand jury hears prosecutors’ case but no defense case. But they’ve grown more common amid the Trump administration’s growing shows of force.
The judge dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning the federal government can bring new charges within 30 days.
Journalists, protestors sue
Also on Monday, a group of journalists, news organizations, unions and protestors sued the federal government for an alleged “pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Block Club Chicago, the Chicago Headline Club, the Illinois Press Association, two journalist unions, three independent journalists and four protesters.
The plaintiffs include Stephen Held, an independent journalist who federal officials allegedly detained for several hours, and the Rev. David Black, a Presbyterian preacher. Federal officials allegedly shot Black repeatedly in the head with pepper balls and sprayed him in the face with tear gas as he called them to prayer.
The lawsuit accuses the government of violating the journalists’ and protesters’ First Amendment rights, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Fourth Amendment’s ban on excessive force and unreasonable seizures, among other charges.
“The targeting of reporters and photographers covering demonstrations outside the ICE facility is more than an assault on the press — it’s an assault on the public’s right to know,” the Headline Club’s Board of Directors said in a Monday statement. “When journalists are silenced, the public loses access to the truth about government actions.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
