Biden judge poised to order the release of a horde of illegal aliens captured by ICE in Chicago

A Biden-appointed federal judge who recently imposed nationwide restrictions on how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can make arrests is poised to potentially release hundreds of illegal aliens arrested by federal agents in the Chicago area.

Background

In May 2018, ICE arrested over 100 illegal aliens including numerous convicted criminal noncitizens in the Chicago area as part of Operation Keep Safe.

The National Immigrant Justice Center, an open-borders advocacy organization, swooped in to defend a handful of the illegal aliens who were captured, accusing the first Trump administration of Administrative Procedure Act and 4th Amendment violations.

The legal campaign to challenge the alleged warrantless arrest of the illegal aliens snowballed into a class-action lawsuit involving two additional activist groups and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which worked in a supporting role.

The plaintiffs managed to surmount the government's attempt to have the case dismissed and in 2022 secured a settlement requiring ICE to follow specific procedures for apprehending illegal aliens without warrants in Illinois and five neighboring states.

The settlement, which ICE policy was augmented to reflect, was set to expire on May 12, 2025.

Biden judge obliges open-borders activists

In March, the NIJC challenged the second Trump administration's warrantless arrests of dozens of illegal aliens in Illinois, requesting that ICE be held accountable for alleged violations of the 2022 settlement.

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Photo by Anadolu/Getty Images

Despite the NIJC's pending motion to enforce the settlement, ICE's principal legal adviser Charles Wall circulated an email in June to all ICE employees indicating that the settlement was terminated and the corresponding policy was rescinded. The agency continued with its campaign to target illegal aliens in a manner unpalatable to the open-borders group, most recently as part of Operation Midway Blitz, which was launched in September.

'They've been uniformly violating the consent decree.'

Amid ICE's efforts to catch violent criminal noncitizens including rapists and members of the terrorist gang Tren de Aragua, the NIJC went running back to the court on Sept. 26, complaining of additional alleged violations of the consent decree and asking that the agreement be extended for another three years.

On Oct. 7, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, a Biden appointee, ruled that ICE violated the settlement — which was supposedly kept alive past its expiration date by the NIJC's pending motion to enforce — citing practices such as ICE agents allegedly carrying blank administrative arrest warrants and filling them in after detaining suspects.

Cummings not only granted an extension of the consent decree settlement until Feb. 2, 2026, but ordered ICE to apply the corresponding policy to all agents nationwide.

While attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have argued that Congress has denied federal courts the ability to grant parole to large groups of illegal aliens in ICE custody, WLS-TV reported that Cummings is contemplating doing just that.

The Biden judge is expected to provide some insight during a hearing on Wednesday into whether he will order ICE to release illegal aliens on interim "alternatives to detention" such as ankle monitor programs or check-in appointments with immigration agents via mobile apps.

Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the NIJC, told WLS that the number of illegal aliens arrested in violation of the consent decree is over 3,000 people.

"If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they've been uniformly violating the consent decree," said Fleming.

Fleming added, "The bargain was if you violate this, the individual [is] eligible for release."

While Fleming is clearly hopeful that Cummings will cut the whole lot loose, WLS legal analyst Gil Soffer suggested that "there's a statute that makes it very difficult for the district court, federal district court, to require the government to take or not take any action in the immigration space."

Blaze News has reached out to the DHS for comment.

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