Judge orders release of dozens of immigrants detained illegally by ICE
in Chicago
[February 28, 2026]
By Maggie Dougherty
CHICAGO — A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of dozens of
people detained by federal immigration enforcement agents without
warrants or probable cause amid ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ last fall.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings individually considered the details
of 53 arrests, weighing factors to determine whether federal immigration
officers violated a consent decree in making those arrests. He ordered
the release of 32 people by noon on March 5 and said he would issue an
order later regarding five more that required further consideration.
Attorneys said that at least 11 of those ordered released by the judge
had already departed the country as of Wednesday. They identified
another 11 as still detained, and said the rest had been released on
conditions that violate the order, such as requirements that they check
in and report address changes to immigration officials. Cummings
previously ordered all conditions for release such as bond and check-ins
be dropped.
The case hinges on the Castañon Nava consent decree, which governs
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol
actions in Illinois and five other Midwestern states.
The decree prevents ICE and CBP officers from arresting immigrants
without signed warrants unless there is reason to believe the person
would escape before a warrant could be obtained for the arrest.
That requires consideration of factors like whether the person has a
job, a home, a family or other ties to their community that would
prevent them from fleeing, how cooperative they were to immigration
agents, and if they have evaded immigration enforcement in the past.
Cummings had previously ordered the release of hundreds arrested for
“potential” violations of the consent decree before an appeals court
ruled that he could not make a sweeping ruling for those arrested using
blank warrants without providing individualized assessments for each
situation.
He made the individual considerations Friday under two categories: The
first included people arrested without a warrant of any kind, while the
second considered arrests made under a recently adopted Immigration and
Customs Enforcement policy allowing agents to carry blank warrants,
known as I-200 warrants, to be filled out in the field.
Of those arrested without a warrant, Cummings ordered the release of all
but one. He was more limited in his ability to release those arrested
with blank I-200 warrants, ordering the release of eight people for whom
the government was unable to produce the warrants or for which the
warrants had serious concerns as to their authenticity.
Questionable authenticity
In some cases, the I-200 warrants were missing key information about the
person arrested, including names and “Alien Registration Numbers,”
unique identifiers assigned by the Department of Homeland Security to
track noncitizens.
In other cases, the information on I-200 warrants used boilerplate
language that contradicted narrative summaries in the other arrest
records or was found to be factually incorrect based on outside
evidence. In one case, Cummings said the issues with the I-200 were so
severe that they were “not simply defects” but indeed “raise questions
about the authenticity of the document.”
For example, in one case, the government claimed a 61-year-old man
attempted to run away from agents to evade arrest.
According to Cummings, the man’s daughter provided testimony that her
father has trouble walking, much less running, due to his age and deep
pain in his leg. Video footage reviewed by Cummings apparently showed
the man walked compliantly with officers, “and walked very slowly,”
according to Cummings.
Cummings said he would “credit the video I saw with my eyes” over the
narrative in the report, since DHS did not produce alternate evidence to
contradict the video.
[to top of second column]
|
Attorneys Michelle García of the ACLU of Illinois and Mark Fleming
of the National Immigrant Justice Center answer reporter questions
on Feb. 27, 2026, at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago.
(Capitol News Illinois photo by Maggie Dougherty)
Other I-200s were produced much later than other arresting
documentation, despite the government’s acknowledgement at an earlier
hearing that those records should be stored together, though Cummings
said this could be attributed to the volume of arrests that occurred
last fall.
Cummings did not order the release of one person who was arrested
without a warrant because the arresting documents indicated that he put
his vehicle in reverse to try to escape agents.
Mark Fleming, a National Immigrant Justice Center attorney representing
the plaintiffs in the case, asked the judge to order the government to
produce the body camera footage that it has from the arrest to prove the
narrative was true.
In 10 other cases previously under dispute, Fleming said DHS had
acknowledged they were violations of the consent decree and conceded to
releasing those people after the plaintiffs asked to see the body camera
footage.
“And so that is why I asked for the body cam for the one individual that
they alleged attempted to flee in his vehicle because, frankly, they
can’t be trusted,” Fleming told reporters after the hearing. “What they
wrote is not trustworthy.”
Cummings asked the DHS attorneys to provide that footage. If it
supported the narratives in the arrest records, his order against the
release will stand.
National enforcement
In his Feb. 17 ruling, Cummings ordered DHS to recirculate the consent
decree policy to all ICE agents nationwide by email, and to advise that
it will remain in effect as the dominant ICE policy governing
warrantless arrests so long as the consent decree remains in effect.
DHS was supposed to circulate the policy by the following day and submit
a certification that it had done so by the end of the week.
The agency certified it had recirculated the policy, but told agents it
only applies to the Chicago regional office and directed all other ICE
offices to adhere to the policy written by ICE Director Todd Lyons,
which reduces the information required to make a warrantless arrest.
Cummings had explicitly specified in an earlier hearing that the
warrantless arrest policy applies nationwide, not only to the states
within ICE’s Chicago regional office.
“Is it your practice to violate orders of a federal court?” Cummings
asked the attorneys representing DHS. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice
that you put this language in here? Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
Lead government attorney James Walker apologized to the judge for what
he called a misunderstanding regarding the scope of the policy. Walker
said the government had presented the language openly and would not
attempt to mislead the court.
Cummings, who had ordered the government to recirculate the policy
nationwide in compliance with the decree, granted the government a delay
in recirculating the policy while the parties clarified the
misunderstanding.
He asked the plaintiffs’ counsel to prepare a reply to the government’s
motion by March 3 and for defendants to file a reply by March 6.
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. |
