A federal judge in Chicago heard oral arguments Friday on a motion filed by immigration and civil rights attorneys in March against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Attorneys accused the federal government of violating the constitutional rights of at least 25 people, including one U.S. citizen, who have been arrested and detained in the Midwest as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
One person is still in custody, one has been deported and the rest have been released on bond.
Attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois said federal immigration agents have made arrests without proper warrants or probable cause, as well as created warrants in the field after arrests were made. The attorneys argue the arrests violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable search and seizure.
“How do you know [a warrant] existed if you can’t find a copy of it?” Judge Jeffrey Cummings of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois asked defense attorneys William H. Weiland and Craig Oswald. This referred to the case of Sergio Bolanos Romero, who attorneys say was arrested without a warrant in late January three blocks from his home in Chicago. He is one of the 25 people listed in the motion.
In his statement, Bolanos Romero said officers dressed in plain clothes pulled him over and told him to get out of his car. “I asked why they had pulled me over, but they did not tell me,” Bolanos Romero said. He said he believed the officers were actually looking for his former neighbor.
The government attorneys acknowledged before Cummings they did not have a warrant on file for Bolanos Romero’s arrest, even though immigrant rights attorneys say that in Bolanos Romero’s arrest report, federal agents said there was a warrant.
In court, Weiland and Oswald argued there is nothing unlawful about having blank warrants available and filling them out on the spot when federal agents see probable cause for an arrest.
Immigrant rights attorneys say agents have been unable to provide evidence of probable cause in several cases.
“The most troubling thing is that we have a law enforcement agency in the United States that clearly does not believe that the Fourth Amendment applies to any of their arrests,” the National Immigrant Justice Center’s Mark Fleming said. “They have tried to set up a parallel universe of policies.”
Fleming and others say the arrests violated the 2022 Castañon Nava settlement agreement, a class action suit filed in response to unlawful arrests by ICE agents who used traffic stops and other tactics to make arrests without a warrant. Under the agreement, ICE officials can conduct a warrantless arrest if they believe an individual is likely to escape, but they must provide evidence.
Fleming and his team submitted two hours of security footage from the arrest of 12 restaurant workers in Liberty, Mo. Fleming says the video shows DHS agents in tactical gear and masks entering a Mexican restaurant at lunchtime, barricading the workers inside and arresting them without a warrant and evidence of probable cause.
Missouri is one of six states, along with Illinois, covered by the Nava settlement.
Michelle Garcia, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU of Illinois, said one of the big takeaways from the hearing is that the government admitted agents did not follow that policy during those arrests.
“Attorneys [representing the federal government] are defending these unlawful actions and trying to do it with a straight face,” Garcia said.
The hearing took place on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individual judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, a decision that left the fate of automatic birthright citizenship uncertain.
It also comes amid a surge of arrests by ICE and federal agents outside immigration courts, on the streets, in workplaces, and in communities.
Immigrant rights attorneys for the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois are asking the court for a three-year extension of the settlement agreement, a court order to stop ICE creating warrants in the field after arrests, bond reimbursements, weekly reports on immigration arrests, and additional training and discipline of the federal agents involved in the arrests.
They are also asking for the immediate release of Abel Orozco Ortega, who was detained outside his home after buying tamales last January in suburban Lyons. Agents were looking for Orozco’s son at the time but arrested him instead. Fleming says federal agents allegedly created an administrative warrant while Orozco-Ortega was handcuffed.
“[Federal agents] arrested him unlawfully,” Fleming said. “He still remains detained, despite the fact that under this settlement agreement, the government is required to release him. Meanwhile … his wife is battling breast cancer, and the family is potentially going to lose their home in foreclosure.”
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