A federal judge in Chicago indicated on Wednesday that he planned to order the release of hundreds of immigrants who were arrested during the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz over the past few months if those people had not already been deported.
The judge, Jeffrey Cummings of U.S. District Court, previously found several instances in which immigration agents made arrests this year without warrants that were issued in advance, in apparent violation of a consent decree.
Judge Cummings said on Wednesday that he planned to order the release of most people in a group of 615 immigration detainees. Those released would have to post a bond and would be placed on electronic monitoring while their cases proceeded in immigration court.
It was not clear how many of those people, many of whom are believed to have been arrested during the administration’s recent crackdown on illegal immigration in the Chicago area, are still in the United States. The judge agreed to give government lawyers time to note anyone they believe poses a public safety threat but barred the government for now from deporting anyone in that group.
“They still will have to go to court,” said Judge Cummings, who issued rulings from the bench but had not released a written order by Wednesday evening. “They still will be subject to removal upon an immigration court order.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, criticized the judge’s decision and said it put lives at risk.
“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,” Ms. McLaughlin said in an emailed statement.
The ruling came as part of a long-running case that was filed in 2018, during President Trump’s first term, and resolved with a consent decree during the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. That consent decree imposed restrictions on when immigration enforcement agents in six states, including Illinois, could apprehend and hold people without a warrant.
Federal agents have flooded the Chicago area since early September, making thousands of arrests and sometimes clashing with residents as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against illegal immigration and so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who represent a group of people who say they were wrongly arrested by immigration agents, said they believed many of the recent arrests had been made without warrants and in violation of the terms of their agreement with the government.
In court, William Weiland, a lawyer for the federal government, asked for more time to sort through details of detainees’ backgrounds and to confer with his clients. He called the judge’s ruling “quite significant” and said that the government “has not conceded at any point that there has been repeated material violations” of the consent decree.
Mr. Weiland said the government considered at least 12 of the 615 detainees to be significant threats to public safety. Judge Cummings said he did not want to release those people.
Judge Cummings, who was nominated to his role by Mr. Biden, said that he did “not sit in the position of making policy for the government” but that he intended to make sure the consent decree was being followed.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they believed that many more people arrested in the Chicago-area crackdown — beyond the 615 detainees — had also been wrongly detained, in violation of the consent decree. The judge ordered the government to turn over information about more recent arrests in the coming days.
Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center, who represents plaintiffs, said he believed the case would show that “this whole operation the last two months — the terrorizing of our neighborhoods, the brutalizing of people here — has all been unlawful.”
Judge Cummings is among several federal judges who have raised concerns about the conduct of immigration agents in the Chicago area this fall.
Last week, one federal judge said that their “use of force shocks the conscience” and issued a preliminary injunction placing limits on agents’ actions. Another federal judge voiced concerns about what he considered “unnecessarily cruel” conditions inside an immigration detention center in the Chicago suburbs and ordered the government to make improvements.
Homeland Security officials have repeatedly defended agents’ tactics and the conditions at that detention site. They have pointed out acts of aggression toward agents, including an incident over the weekend in which they said shots were fired at Border Patrol agents in Chicago.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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