CHICAGO (WLS) — A U.S. District Judge has ruled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated a previously agreed-upon consent decree over warrantless arrests in the Chicago area and unlawfully detained more than two dozen people in the first months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
“Collateral arrests” or people arrested while ICE agents are patrolling the street, often without a previously signed warrant, have been a major tactic deployed during the local immigration enforcement crackdown branded “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Now, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings has imposed limits on when agents can make those kinds of arrests as part of an extended consent decree that will last until Feb. 2, 2026.
Cummings also imposed reporting requirements for ICE to share how many people are being arrested in the Chicago area without a warrant.
In an emailed statement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “DHS complies with all lawful court orders and is addressing this matter with the court.”
The ABC7 I-Team has been following this case closely after attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and the ACLU of Illinois accused DHS and ICE in March of violating the 2022 Castañon Nava settlement after the warrantless arrest of 26 individuals during the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Those kinds of arrests have ramped up significantly in the last month, said NIJC attorney Mark Fleming.
“What we have seen now to a much larger scale is federal agents indiscriminately stopping and arresting people without warrants and without probable cause required by federal immigration laws,” Fleming said on Wednesday.
The Castañon Nava consent decree or settlement applies to ICE arrests in Illinois and five neighboring states. It was named after the original plaintiff in the 2022 lawsuit, Margarito Castañon Nava.
While the remedies ordered by Cummings apply only to the six-state region of the Chicago Field Office, the NIJC said the consent decree’s policy applies nationwide.
According to the Castañon Nava settlement, ICE agreed to certain conditions for arresting someone in the Chicago area without a warrant, including pre-determining whether there is probable cause to believe the person is in the country illegally, and whether they are also a flight risk; two requirements that immigrant advocates say have been flouted in at least 200 documented cases, according to Fleming.
Among the plaintiffs arrested unlawfully by ICE this year and cited in the NIJC’s case is 47-year-old Abel Orozco-Ortega, a father who was arrested on Jan. 26 after living in the U.S. for nearly 30 years, his family previously shared with the I-Team.
Orozco-Ortega has no criminal history, his attorneys told the I-Team, only a removal order from 2004 after he visited his father in Mexico and returned to the country without applying for asylum or citizenship.
“He was the main provider,” said Eduardo Orozco, Abel’s son, earlier this year. “He was the one who paid all of the bills and bought all of the food and everything. So having him gone, it’s hard.”
As the I-Team previously reported, according to ICE’s arrest report for Orozco, which was provided to the I-Team by his attorney, agents did not have a warrant for him at the time he was detained.
In fact, after pulling Orozco over and detaining him, agents eventually realized they had the wrong person.
Agents “reviewed the [original] target’s case and observed that the date of birth was not consistent with the [driver’s license Orozco] provided,” the report states.
The ICE agents’ warrant was not for Abel Orozco, it was for his oldest son, the report notes. But after checking DHS systems and finding a decades-old removal order for the father, agents prepared a new warrant on the spot after carrying blank warrant forms for such an occasion.
ICE agents were taught how to do this at the ICE Academy, according to attorneys for the NIJC and as seen in training materials shared with the I-Team.
An attorney representing DHS had previously argued this training was lawful, and that even though agents carried blank warrants, an agent supervisor was required to sign it.
In his order, Judge Cummings noted ICE’s legal arguments for carrying blank warrant forms for collateral arrests are “meritless,” and in the case of Orozco’s arrest, the warrant issued after he was detained was “invalid.”
ICE records show Orozco remains in federal custody at a detention facility in Kentucky.
The NIJC says it will seek the release of hundreds of people they claim were unlawfully arrested, including men arrested during a raid in Elgin where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was present, and a family detained in Millennium Park last month.
All those arrests are examples of what Cummings ruled is an ongoing pattern of ICE violating the terms of the consent decree.
“If they [ICE] made a warrantless arrest, they need to justify and document the specific information justifying that warrantless arrest,” Fleming said during a Wednesday news conference.
ABC7 Chief Legal Analyst Gil Soffer says the government is likely to appeal the ruling.
“We’ll see if it changes operations on the ground. [Cummings] is certainly sending a shot across the bow,” Soffer said. “If it’s going to be abided by… that’s going to slow things down and really impose rigor around the process.”
The order requires all immigration officers who violated the consent decree to be retrained, and for DHS to share with the court the “names, A-numbers, and arrest documents for all individuals arrested without warrants since June in the Northern District of Illinois, and to provide that same reporting monthly going forward,” the NIJC said.
During a Wednesday news conference on the order, immigrant advocates were intensely emotional over the ruling win.
Fighting back tears, Xanat Sobrevilla with Organized Communities Against Deportation said the ruling has raised spirits.
“To our Black and Brown people and immigrants, it does not always seem like this Earth wants us,” Sobrevilla said. “But we want us, and that can be enough.”
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