Federal Judge Orders Over 600 ICE Detainees To Be Released From Custody

A federal judge in Chicago ordered roughly 600 people to be released from immigration detention on Wednesday. The individuals, the judge found, had been arrested in violation of a 2022 consent decree designed to ensure immigration agents have probable cause before making warrantless arrests. The decision is yet another legal blow to “Operation Midway Blitz,” the ongoing immigration operation in Chicago meant to help fulfill President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

During Wednesday’s hearing, United States District Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings stressed that those identified will not be released if they pose a risk to public safety, according to the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Jon Seidel, and noted that not all of them will still be in custody. “There might be quite a few of them who are already gone,” Cummings continued, referring to detainees who are eligible for relief but who may have already been deported. 

The consent decree was meant to ensure that the agencies complied with federal law, which stipulates that immigration officers may only make a warrantless arrest if two conditions are met: first, immigration officers must have “reason to believe” that the individual is in the U.S. in violation of any immigration law or regulation and, second, that they are likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Critically, without having both, there is no probable cause to make a warrantless arrest. 

In October, Cummings found that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had made warrantless arrests of individuals without the necessary probable cause and had been violating the consent decree since Trump took office in January. Since then, attorneys have been trying to determine who has been arrested by ICE this year in violation of the agreement—and who still remains in the country—to provide relief. 

But Cummings’ decision to release 615 immigrant detainees likely doesn’t cover the full extent of warrantless arrests made in violation of the 2022 agreement. Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the legal groups that filed on behalf of plaintiffs in the case, believes that warrantless arrests without probable cause may be happening daily in the Chicago area. The organization’s list of people it has identified who were arrested in violation of the settlement has grown to over 3,000. 

“As we’re digging into it, we are very concerned that many, if not most [of ICE arrests], are violations of our consent decree,” Fleming told 7 Eyewitness News, a local ABC affiliate. “We’ve started to dig into the case file [DHS and ICE] produced to us, and the vast majority are violations,” he continued. “If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree.” 

Cummings’s October ruling and Wednesday’s decision to release immigrant detainees not only underscore the importance of establishing probable cause in immigration arrests but also deliver an important check on immigration enforcement. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh came under scrutiny in September for blessing racial profiling by immigration agents, writing that it was “common sense” to allow officers to use “relevant factors,” like ethnicity, spoken language, and location, to conduct an investigatory stop. But Cummings’ ruling would limit immigration agents’ ability to arrest any individuals stopped in the Chicago area because of racial profiling by requiring a determination as to whether they also pose a flight risk. His decision—which only applies to ICE’s Chicagoland area of authority, including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas—could go on to influence the outcome of similar cases in other jurisdictions.

Wednesday’s ruling to release hundreds of immigrant detainees is surely a victory for those who are still trapped in detention, but less so for those who are no longer in the country and, therefore, have no avenue for relief. With ICE moving so much faster than the courts, the agency may not feel many real consequences for flouting the rights of those—including American citizens—who come in contact with the growing immigration industrial complex. Until it does, federal immigration agents are sure to violate more people’s rights for the foreseeable future.