For an administration with a known history of poor tracking of immigrants, the job U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings assigned them Wednesday seems insurmountable. Because the Trump Administration violated a consent decree in Illinois that limits warrantless arrests, Judge Cummings ordered DHS to provide 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.”
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…
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.
Cummings was one unhappy judge.
The National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU had filed the lawsuit. They “alleged more than 3,000 people were arrested between June and October in ‘Operation Midway Blitz’.”
“They’re all being awarded bond for 615, but how is that process going to happen?” said Mark Fleming, an attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center, at a news conference Wednesday. He noted the people set to be released “are probably all over the country” and need to be located, Fleming told CNN.
- By Friday, DHS must give the judge the status and flight risk of 615 people
- By next Wednesday, Nov. 19, DHS must give the judge a current list of all the people both Border Patrol and ICE have arrested in Chicago.
- By next Friday, Nov. 21, “DHS must release on bond into a monitoring program at least 313 people whom the plaintiffs say were arrested in violation of the agreement and the government deems low risk for flight. They’ll remain free on bond until the merits of their cases can be assessed.”
Who here thinks that DHS has those records at their fingertips? Right.
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