Federal Judges Frees More Than 300 Chicago-Area Detainees Because ICE Violated A 2018 Consent Decree

from the fuck-off-with-your-kavanaugh-stops dept

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the system of checks and balances. We’ve missed you, buddy!

Long story somewhat short: ICE has been terrible for years, but it’s been much worse under Trump. During Trump’s first regime (~2016-2020), ICE got rocked by a court decision that prevented it from engaging in traffic stops just so it could arrest people for looking vaguely Mexican.

That settlement — secured with the assistance of the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) — was enacted in 2022 during the brief period between Trump Oval Office interloping.

Interlopement or not, it’s still the law of the land in Illinois. And that’s not playing well with Trump’s recent federal invasion of the Chicago area — one spearheaded by Nazi cosplayer Gregory Bovino, last seen violating the law much further south as the commander of a California-based Border Patrol unit.

Bovino chose to violate court orders so often during his short stint in Chicago, he’s been sent elsewhere by the Trump administration. It’s definitely not a sign of disapproval. It’s a vote of confidence that says the presidency will keep changing tables every time it loses a hand to the federal courts.

The Nava consent decree that forbids ICE from doing what it’s been doing in Chicago since before Trump re-grooved his ass marks in the chair behind the Resolute Desk.

And that means a lot of stops, arrests, and ensuing detentions are illegal. And because they’re illegal, people must be freed. The administration continues to act like there’s nothing in the law that prevents it from jailing people who present no flight risk or threat to public safety. That’s definitely not the law of the land and it’s definitely not the law in Seventh Circuit, which has already received notice of the administration’s appeal.

For now, however, that means a lot of people rounded up during Trump’s invasion of Chicago and ICE operations in the area preceding the anti-Democratic Party surge d/b/a “immigration enforcement” will no longer be imprisoned.

District Judge Jeffrey Cummings on Wednesday afternoon ordered the release of at least 313 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between June and early October.

[…]

Cummings has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately release 13 detainees held in Texas, Missouri and other states that both the government and plaintiffs agree were detained in violation of the Castañon Nava settlement that prohibits warrantless immigration arrest in Illinois.

The order [PDF] itself doesn’t limit itself to 13 people, much less the 313 people stated by this Axios article. It says the government must take a look at more than twice this number and provide some sort of evidence as to why this other 300+ should continue to be detained.

To this end, by 12:00 p.m. CST on November 14, 2025, with respect to the subset of 615 individuals discussed on the record, defendants shall provide the Court with their names and specify which of the individuals in this group have been identified by defendants as posing a “high public safety risk” if they were released.

That deadline has come and gone. And the only thing the administration has done is file motions asking for this order to be stayed until this case can be heard by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court. It has offered nothing in defense of those arrests and continued detentions of people it’s unlikely to be able to prove must be indefinitely detained despite being arrested in violation of the Nava Agreement (2022). But it’s apparently hoping the court that didn’t feel Gregory Bovino should be forced to respect the law will have much to say about the consent decree violations it engaged in while Bovino was still running the show in Chicago.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, chicago, consent decree, dhs, ice, mass deportations, racism, rights violations, trump administration, unlawful arrest

Companies: immigrant justice