CHICAGO — A Chicago federal judge has extended a nationwide consent decree requiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to better document and report probable cause for immigration arrests and found the agency repeatedly violated the 2022 agreement by making “warrantless arrests” both before and during “Operation Midway Blitz.”

In his 52-page ruling, which has implications for immigration enforcement operations across the country, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said ICE had improperly told its field offices over the summer that the consent decree had been canceled.

He also called into question the recent immigration raid on an apartment building in South Shore, where agents in military gear burst through doors and zip-tied residents regardless of citizenship.

And the judge also took particular issue with a practice by ICE agents of carrying blank warrant forms known as I-200s with them on missions and filling them out at the scene.

The plaintiffs argued the blank warrants were a way for ICE to circumvent the requirement that agents have probable cause someone is a flight risk before making a so-called collateral arrest, meaning detaining someone without a prior written warrant. Cummings agreed, writing in his opinion “ICE lacked statutory and regulatory authority to engage in its policy of issuing I-200 warrants to collaterals in the field.”

In his opinion, which extended the consent decree until February, the judge lifted all conditions of release for 11 people detained in the Chicago area who were subjected to warrantless arrests, and ordered ICE to produce names, detainee tracking information known as “A-numbers,” and arrest documents for anyone arrested in the northern Illinois without warrants since June.

Cummings also ordered ICE to broadcast the conditions of the consent decree order to its offices nationwide.

Mark Fleming, a lead attorney for the National Immigrant Justice Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, said Wednesday the court’s decision “recognizes the scope and gravity of the constitutional violations that federal immigration enforcement operations have wrought on Chicagoans, both citizens and immigrants alike.”

“The court emphasizes that ensuring ICE has probable cause to make an arrest is more important than ever in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Vasquez Perdomo racial-profiling decision,” Fleming said, referencing the recent high court opinion that immigration officers can consider factors such as race and job status in determining whether probable cause exists to make an immigration stop. “This decision gives us tools to hold DHS and ICE accountable.”

He also said it’s “likely just the tip of the iceberg,” since the 200 or so violations they identified so far were only in cases where a loved one or other person came forward to report it.

“We have reason to believe the federal government has made way more warrantless arrests or arrested people with defective warrants,” he said. “We look forward to the accountability that the court has ordered here.”

His co-counsel, Michelle Garcia, deputy legal director for the ACLU Illinois, said the decision is an important tool to make sure the government is following the law.

“It is an exciting moment,” Garcia said, before adding, “We have a lot of work to do.”

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, could not immediately be reached.

The highly anticipated decision marks the most significant legal challenge yet to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement blitz in Chicago.

It stems from alleged violations of the Castañon Nava consent decree, in place since 2022. It bars ICE agents from making warrantless immigration arrests unless they have probable cause to believe someone is in the U.S. unlawfully and that the person is a flight risk.

Among those added as recent alleged violations: a family from Ecuador, including a 5-year-old girl, arrested in the parking lot of a Humboldt Park shopping center; a man from Mexico with no criminal record arrested in a high-profile Elgin raid attended by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; and a mother and her two young children detained in Millennium Park downtown in a case highlighted by the Tribune.

The plaintiffs, which included the NIJC and American Civil Liberties Union, had sought a three-year extension of the consent decree to help curb the tide of what they called “increasingly violent and dangerous arrests by DHS and other federal officers” in Chicago.

In addition to extending the consent decree, the plaintiffs want Cummings to order the immediate release of more than 100 people swept up in Chicago-area raids since “Operation Midway Blitz” began Sept. 8, as well as force ICE to better document the probable cause for arrests going forward, Fleming said.

In his ruling, Cummings gave a lengthy interpretation of the importance of probable cause, which he said is “heightened by ICE’s embrace” of the race- and employment-based standards set forth recently by the Supreme Court.

Cummings said foreign nationals are “interwoven” with legal residents throughout Chicago, putting U.S. citizens and noncitizens with legal status in jeopardy of being “subjected to ICE questioning for sometimes lengthy periods of detention” during indiscriminate immigration sweeps.

To make his point, the judge referenced the raid in South Shore on Sept. 30, where roughly 300 immigration officers and other law enforcement personnel, supported by Black Hawk helicopters, ransacked the apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive, detaining dozens of people for questioning.

DHS claimed the raid targeted the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and said 37 people were arrested on immigration violations, but has since provided no further details.

Cummings said in his ruling that many details of the raid remain unknown, including the number of warrantless or collateral arrests that were made and whether any of the true targets of the mission were even found there.

“However, 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,” Cummings wrote.

The Castañon Nava settlement agreement was originally supposed to sunset in March. At a hearing in June, however, Cummings made clear that the consent decree would remain in effect while he sorted out the motions alleging repeated violations by ICE.

Many of the alleged violations involved “collateral arrests,” or the detaining of individuals who are not targets, which the plaintiffs have argued are becoming commonplace as the administration ramped up daily quotas of people detained.

During the hearing in June, Fleming described a pattern of reckless and unlawful enforcement actions after President Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term and pledged to begin mass deportations in Chicago. In some cases, Fleming said, ICE agents even carry around blank warrants, one of which he handed up to the judge for inspection.

“That doesn’t sit well with me,” Cummings told lawyers for the government, according to a transcript of the hearing. “I want to offer you a chance to explain how that is legitimate. You are carrying around blank forms so that you can get around making an individual flight risk analysis that you would otherwise have to do for a warrantless arrest.”

The attorney for the Department of Justice, William Weiland, told the judge he didn’t think there was “anything inappropriate or unlawful” about the practice of filling out blank warrants on the spot.

“They have the lawful authority to issue an administrative warrant in the field, and that is what they do,” Weiland said, according to the transcript.

Fleming told the Tribune last week that ICE is the “only law enforcement agency in the country that feels it doesn’t need to document probable cause” for an arrest.

_____

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.