CHICAGO (WLS) — A federal judge has decided to grant bond to as many as 615 migrants detained in the Chicago region, following arrests made under the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz.” This release is expected to occur by November 19.
Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled in favor of attorneys defending the detainees, who argued that the Department of Homeland Security breached a consent decree restricting federal agents from making arrests without warrants. The judge directed the Trump administration to disclose information regarding how many of the 615 individuals involved in the lawsuit remain in the United States or have criminal backgrounds.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
Migrants with criminal histories who pose a threat to public safety will not qualify for release. Those who are eligible may be supervised through alternative methods, such as wearing ankle monitors.
The American Civil Liberties Union informed ABC News that the judge also mandated the release of an additional 13 migrants within two days, who will not be required to wear ankle monitors.
This consent decree, effective until February 2026, applies to Illinois and five neighboring states. It generally prohibits federal immigration officials from conducting warrantless arrests unless there is reason to believe that the individual has committed a crime and might evade capture.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security expressed on social media that the judge’s order compromises the safety of Americans.
“At every turn activist judges, sanctuary politicians, and violent rioters have actively tried to prevent our law enforcement officers from arresting and removing the worst of the worst. Now an ACTIVIST JUDGE is putting the lives of Americans directly at risk by ordering 615 illegal aliens be released into the community,” DHS said.
Last month, Judge Cummings ruled agents had violated a previously agreed-upon consent decree over warrantless arrests in the Chicago area known as the 2022 Castañon Nava settlement.
Since that ruling, attorneys on both sides of the case have been working to identify how many people arrested by immigration agents this year violated the previously agreed-upon consent decree.
Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center believes cases like these are happening daily.
“As we’re digging into it, we are very concerned that many, if not most [of ICE arrests], are violations of our consent decree,” Fleming told the I-Team.
Fleming said so far, the list of people arrested in violation of the consent decree has grown to more than 3,000 people.
“Our initial analysis is that it’s over 3,000 arrests,” Fleming told the I-Team. “We’ve started to dig into the case file that they produced to us, and the vast majority are violations. If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree.”
So far, Fleming said that ICE has produced a list of 3,800 people, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol has given a list of 1,200 people, but he stressed that there may be duplicate entries on both lists, so his team does not have a solid total figure yet. Also, those lists were only through the beginning of October, and do not include arrests in the last month.
Attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security have argued that Congress stripped federal courts of their authority to grant parole to large groups of immigrants in ICE custody.
In their filings, government attorneys argue, “Congress has vested the authority to grant parole solely with the Secretary of Homeland Security… Federal courts cannot order the Department of Homeland Security to release any aliens on parole because Congress has stripped them of that authority.”
In their review of people arrested by agents potentially in violation of the consent decree, Fleming said more than 1,000 people are no longer in the U.S., meaning they may have been deported already after signing voluntary removal orders.
“A lot of these folks have never had any interaction with law enforcement before, nor been subject to detention, and so it’s horrifying,” Fleming explained.
Fleming continued, “What we’ve raised to the court is if you don’t provide this interim relief, there will be no one left. At the end of this, we may find thousands of violations, but there may be no one left.”
ABC News contributed to this report.
