CHICAGO (WLS) — The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) has taken legal action, claiming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers breached legal protocols when they apprehended a family of four at the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park last weekend.
The incident occurred on Sunday, with U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino and several masked, armed agents clad in camouflage present, demonstrating a strong stance to further President Trump’s extensive deportation initiatives.
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The local effort has been codenamed “Operation Midway Blitz.”
In a legal document filed by NIJC attorneys on Tuesday, it was revealed that agents detained the parents and their children, aged three and eight, “without legal warrants or assessments of flight risk.”
“The family wished to spend a peaceful Sunday afternoon at Millennium Park upon their daughter’s request,” the document reveals. “However, DHS has already relocated [one parent] to a facility in Texas, while [the other parent] and the children remain confined at a location in O’Hare airport.”
An Instagram video by Arab Chicago, part of the court evidence, captures the family being led out of Millennium Park by federal agents.
“According to the video, it appears DHS officers depended on the young daughter to communicate,” the document highlights. “Under Mr. Bovino’s supervision, immigration enforcement in Chicago is adopting an aggressive, reckless, and illegal enforcement strategy.”
Attorneys with the NIJC have argued ICE agents in this case and many more are violating a 2022 settlement agreement or consent decree known as the “Castañon Nava” settlement.
According to that agreement, ICE agreed to certain conditions for arresting someone in the Chicago area of responsibility without a warrant, including pre-determining whether there is probable cause to believe the person is in the US illegally, and whether they are also a flight risk; two requirements that immigrant advocates say have been flouted since the start of the second Trump administration.
The Chicago area of responsibility consists of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas.
The I-Team was in the Northern District of Illinois federal courthouse this past July as plaintiffs and the U.S. Department of Justice argued their case in front of the Honorable Jeffery Cummings, who said based on the evidence submitted to the court, “Many things [are] troubling me about these situations.”
“We don’t know the magnitude of this problem,” Judge Cummings said during that July hearing. “It’s impossible to tell.”
Among the allegations made in court, the NIJC found agents at the ICE Academy were trained and instructed to carry blank I-200 DHS arrest warrant forms for filling out on the spot of an enforcement action, with a supervisor’s approval, in order to avoid the court-ordered “warrantless” requirements.
Lawyers for the Justice Department argued in cases of collateral arrests, where agents did not initially have a warrant for an individual, warrants were eventually obtained and in some cases, it may be burdensome to assess flight risk on the spot.
The Department of Homeland Security has yet to respond to the I-Team’s request for comment on the Millennium Park enforcement action.
The government has previously maintained that all of the arrests were lawful and did not violate the settlement agreement.
Cummings has yet to rule on whether ICE had violated the terms of the Castañon Nava settlement.
A status hearing for the Castañon Nava case was scheduled for this Friday, but has since been canceled due to the federal government shutdown.
In a Wednesday posting on the court’s docket, Cummings said he “will issue a written ruling in the coming days to address plaintiffs’ motion to enforce the [Castañon Nava] settlement agreement.”
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