Francia Garcia Hernandez/Block Club ChicagoThe National Immigration Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois are alleging that ICE violated a 2022 federal settlement. A U.S. citizen was among those arrested near Chicago.
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CHICAGO — Immigration and civil liberties advocates based in Chicago are suing federal authorities over the arrests of 22 people in the Midwest – including one U.S. citizen – since President Donald Trump took office.
Attorneys for the National Immigration Justice Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said Monday that agents from Immigration Customs and Enforcement have made several arrests without a warrant since Trump returned to the White House in January. The arrests violate immigration laws and a prior settlement agreement that restricted ICE from making warrantless arrests, the attorneys said.
In six cases, ICE agents arrested people after stopping their cars or while they were in their cars, and ICE agents forced their way into the detainees’ homes three other times, according to the lawsuit.
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“Based on a very limited sample of the total number of people that [ICE] have arrested here in Chicago and the Chicago area of responsibility, we feel convinced that ICE has attempted a pattern and practice of engaging in violations of the law, the settlement and the Constitution,” Mark Fleming, associate director of the National Immigrant Justice Center’s federal litigation project, said at a news conference Monday.
In a new 37-page class action motion filed last week that alleged violations of that settlement, the two groups ask a judge to order the release of any people named in the lawsuit who are still detained and to do so without bond or release conditions. They want those who have been arrested and released to have their bond payments reimbursed and have any release conditions lifted.
The groups are also asking authorities to identify ICE agents who violated the 2022 settlement and to participate in “remedial efforts” that could include termination, probation, fines and/or retraining. In one case, the new filing is seeking a stay of the planned removal of one person arrested by ICE agents this year and an order requiring the government to return a person previously deported from the United States.
It also asks the court to demand immigration authorities release a report of all immigration arrests since Jan. 20 by the ICE Chicago field office, which oversees operations in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky and Kansas.
Rebecca Glenberg, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Illinois, said ICE officers this year have made arrests without warrants, failed to document warrantless arrests, obtained a warrant after making a warrantless arrest and arrested people without probable cause and without evaluating their flight risk.
In several of these cases, ICE officers made “collateral arrests” or arrested individuals after making a traffic stop.
Abel Orozco Ortega, a 40-year-old man from suburban Lyons, was arrested Jan. 26 by ICE after immigration authorities stopped him as he returned from buying food for his family. Fleming said ICE officers asked for Orozco Ortega’s driver’s license, pulled him from his car and arrested him while searching for one of Orozco Ortega’s sons, who has the same name.
When another son, Eduardo Ortega — a U.S. citizen — tried to took for his father, who was in the back of a police car, the driver ran over his foot, according to the lawsuit. After his detention, Orozco Ortega was taken to Indiana, where he remains in the custody of immigration authorities.
Orozco Ortega had no criminal record and was the sole provider for his family, said his wife, Yolanda Orozco. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and is unsure how she will pay for medical care and housing while her husband is detained, she said.
“He is a working man. He is loving. He is caring. He’s responsible. He is somebody to look up to, and he is an honest man, and he shouldn’t have been arrested,” said his son, Eduardo Ortega.
Agents drove Noriega around for an hour before moving him to an ICE detention center, according to the lawsuit. About 10 hours later, he was released without paperwork and money after ICE officers discovered he had identification proving his U.S. citizenship. Noriega said he was never shown a warrant or asked questions to determine if he was a citizen or a flight risk, according to the lawsuit.
The new filing also describes the ICE arrests of 12 people without a warrant Feb. 7 at a Mexican restaurant in Liberty, Missouri. After the arrest, ICE created documents for their deportation but did not specify the reasons to arrest them without a warrant. The case is under the jurisdiction of ICE’s Chicago office, attorneys said.
Nine people were detained and released under bond, one person is still detained and another was already deported, according to the lawsuit.
In five cases included in the lawsuit, even if the arrests started as investigatory stops, “they quickly became warrantless arrests,” according to the lawsuit.
ICE officers can stop cars when there is “reasonable suspicion” a specific immigrant whom they know or believe is illegally in the United States is in the car. In these cases, ICE officers arrested the individuals named in the lawsuit before having a warrant, according to the lawsuit.
Fleming said the new class action motion is also asking ICE to provide weekly reports of federal immigration arrests in the Chicago area of responsibility. Despite repeated requests from reporters, ICE officials haven’t disclosed exactly who their agents arrested in Chicago, what they were arrested for or what’s happened to them since.
“We’re asking for the court to order a list and the underlying documents of everyone that was arrested in a non-custodial environment since the inauguration,” Fleming said.
These violations are “part of a larger effort to execute the administration’s threats of mass deportation,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Yet, it is possible to hold immigrations authorities accountable thanks to the people who have reported ICE operations and unlawful arrests, Tsao said.
The Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite a federal judge order prohibiting their transfer issued Saturday, The Associated Press reported.
The lawsuit also comes after ICE officers arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and Palestinian activist who organized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. The move has raised questions over First Amendment protections for immigrants with legal status and the authority of the secretary of state to order deportations, the Washington Post reported.
“Every time you hear from this administration about how they’re rounding up gang members, terrorists, the worst of the worst, you need to take a dose of reality and realize that you need to dig deeper to understand who exactly they are arresting,” Fleming said.
Neighbors can report an ICE sighting or arrest at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ hotline at 855-435-7693.
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