Federal judge says he’ll order release of hundreds of Operation Midway Blitz arrestees on bond

A federal judge on Wednesday said he plans to grant bond to hundreds of immigrants whose arrests during Operation Midway Blitz are being challenged under a consent decree that limits so-called warrantless arrests that occur without a prior warrant or probable cause.

In a packed hearing at Chicago’s federal courthouse, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the immediate release of 13 people whose arrests the Department of Justice agreed violated the 2022 agreement.

The judge also told lawyers for the government to produce a list by Nov. 19 detailing how many of a subset of 615 class members were still in custody, and whether they qualified for mandatory detention due to a prior criminal history or removal order.

Unless a detainee was shown to be a security risk, Cummings said he would allow their release on a $1,500 bond and some form of monitoring, including electronic ankle monitors, pending the outcome of immigration proceedings. Most of those arrested were originally processed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in west suburban Broadview, but have since been moved to jails around the country.

Meanwhile, Cummings’ decision will ultimately affect a much wider segment of the thousands of arrests made by ICE and U.S. Border Patrol in Chicago since the Trump administration’s enhanced immigration-enforcement operations.

So far, the government has identified more than 3,300 such arrests, the vast majority of which plaintiffs’ attorneys believe will prove to be unlawful.

In explaining his decision, Cummings read from a summary he and his law clerks compiled from more than 150 ongoing immigration petitions in federal court, where arrestees were challenging deportation. He said the circumstances of the arrests showed him that, by and large, Operation Midway Blitz was not targeting hardened criminals.

Of them, Cummings said, 54 people were arrested while at work, including 20 landscapers, four Uber or taxi drivers, and two street vendors. Another 20 were arrested while commuting to or from work, and nine were detained at a Home Depot or Menards, where they were presumably either seeking work or buying job supplies, the judge said.

Six were arrested “outside their home or a friend’s or relative’s home,” he said. Seven people were arrested at immigration hearings or appointments, and another 11 in public places such as shops, grocery stores, and even “a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru,” Cummings said.

“It is highly unlikely any of them are criminal gang members, drug traffickers or assorted ne’er-do-wells who fall under the category of what ICE has called ‘the worst of the worst,’” Cummings said.

Upon learning of the judge’s plans, William Weiland, a civil attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, called it “quite significant” and asked for an immediate stay on any order of release so he could speak with his superiors. At least 12 of the 615 were considered to be a significant security risk, and more time was needed to vet them, Weiland said.

Cummings said he would give the government time to compile that information and ordered both sides to submit a status report on Nov. 21.

While the judge’s rulings Wednesday were significant, there was still a lot of work to be done, including figuring out the logistics of how to even notify clients that they are eligible for bond, said plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Fleming.

As the government has dragged its feet, Fleming said, hundreds of people arrested under Midway Blitz have been deported or agreed to leave the country as they sat in jail. It’s difficult to pinpoint how many people fall into those categories, but that number is growing each day, Fleming said.

After the hearing, Fleming, of the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the case would ultimately show that many aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies — including the “terrorizing of neighborhoods” by Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino — were against the law.

“This case is going to show that all of this, all of the tactics from Mr. Bovino, all of the tactics from ICE, have been unlawful in the vast, vast majority of arrests,” Fleming told reporters in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

The development in court comes amid litigation over whether immigration officials have violated a consent decree restricting warrantless arrests.

Plaintiffs defending those who have been arrested have accused federal officials of repeatedly breaking the terms of the consent decree and asked that Cummings issue a blanket order releasing most of the detainees on ankle monitoring. The government, meanwhile, said plaintiffs were trying to “paint with a broad brush” and that the validity of detaining someone should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Known as the Castañon Nava settlement agreement, the consent decree issued during the Biden administration bars 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.

It was originally supposed to sunset in March. Instead, after the Trump administration began ramping up immigration enforcement efforts in January, lawyers for the National Immigrant Justice Center and ACLU alleged dozens of violations, mostly involving “collateral arrests,” or the detaining of individuals who are not targets.

In his Oct. 7 order extending the consent decree until February, 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 I-200 warrant forms with them on missions and filling them out at the scene.

In his opinion, Cummings ordered ICE to produce the names, detainee tracking information known as “A-numbers,” and arrest documents for anyone arrested in northern Illinois without warrants since June. He also ordered ICE to broadcast the conditions of the consent decree order to its offices nationwide.

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 have 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.