Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.
As the Trump administration ratchets up its targeting of immigrant communities across the Chicagoland area, elected officials are looking for any tool they can find to protect their residents from militarized raids and roving bands of Border Patrol officers.
Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans banned civil arrests at county courthouses across Chicago this week, preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting and attempting to deport people who show up to public courtrooms for matters unrelated to immigration.
The order went into effect on Tuesday and comes as federal judges and public officials in Illinois continue to push back against President Donald Trump and Operation Midway Blitz, ICE’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, after weeks of militarized chaos and violent arrests.
Immigration violations are a civil, not criminal, offense, despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to brand them that way. Under a policy established shortly after Trump took office that opened formerly protected areas such as schools and churches to immigration enforcement, ICE agents have arrived at Chicago area courthouses masked and unannounced to arrest people showing up for regular hearings, often without arrest warrants or uniforms clearly identifying them as ICE agents, according to Cook County Commissioner Jessica Vasquez.
Vasquez said local officials and advocates were particularly alarmed after ICE made an arrest in September outside a courthouse that hears cases filed by victims of domestic violence.
“Broadly across Cook County we have seen ICE agents target our courthouses for arrests, and these are individuals who are being compelled to come to court, they are coming to hearings they are mandated to go to,” Vasquez told Truthout in an interview. “Your government is asking you to come in for this, and then you are essentially being targeted by this federal agency for arrest.”
The ban on civil arrests at Cook County courts follows similar moves by judges and local officials in Oregon, New York, New Jersey and beyond to limit ICE’s ability to arrest people in and around public courtrooms, including civil litigants and crime victims. Since Trump took office, ICE has targeted undocumented people who attempt to comply with everyday legal obligations — including immigration check-ins required of those seeking permanent legal residence in the United States.
Federal detention data and reports from Chicago and across the country suggest ICE is targeting anyone who is unable to produce documentation regardless of their criminal history or how long they have lived in the United States.
As part of Operation Midway Blitz, ICE agents have enraged and terrified residents with a series of militarized and highly performative immigration sweeps and raids across Chicago in recent weeks. Despite a well-documented drop in homicides and shootings recently, Trump has described Chicago as a crime-ridden “hellhole” and is pushing to deploy the National Guard against the wishes of city leaders and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
A federal judge on October 9 issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s National Guard deployment for two weeks. A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the administration’s appeal and upheld the ruling.
More than a dozen lawyers, legal aid groups, and civil rights organizations petitioned Judge Evans for the ban on civil immigration arrests at county courthouses on October 1. According to the petition, ICE agents entered at least four separate courthouses across Chicago’s Cook County in September alone, including the Cook County Domestic Violence Courthouse.
“The reason we moved with such urgency was because we are also seeing how they are entering courthouses in New York City … they are masked, don’t have identification visible, and they come in and you don’t know what they are there for, essentially,” said Vasquez, who called Judge Evans to act on the petition.
In a statement, the Cook County Public Defender’s office said the order was urgently needed to ensure that courthouses remain accessible to the public regardless of immigration status. “No longer will federal immigration agents be permitted to use our court system as a way to target people who are complying with court orders or supporting loved ones,” the public defender’s office said.
Two state lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would codify the ban on civil arrests, including immigration arrests, at courthouses across the entire state of Illinois. Experts say states could also pass laws prohibiting staff at courthouses and state agencies from working directly with ICE.
Vasquez publicly called for the ban on civil arrests on October 3, the same day an ICE agent manhandled and handcuffed Chicago Alderwoman Jessie Fuentes while she was attempting to visit a constituent who was targeted by ICE while receiving treatment inside a hospital. The ICE agent reportedly threatened Fuentes with arrest before releasing her outside the hospital, and the alderwoman is reportedly preparing to file a lawsuit in response.
In a video of the incident, Fuentes can be seen asking plainclothed ICE agents for identification and a warrant before one of them grabs her, spins her around and puts her in handcuffs. Fuentes, who is Puerto Rican and represents a historically Latinx area of Chicago, told Block Club Chicago on Tuesday that the same ICE agent has apparently been seen in other raids in Chicago, and alleged that he was one of the agents caught on camera aggressively pushing a woman into a car in a Chicago neighborhood.
“Us documenting the atrocities, the constitutional violations and the violence that we are witnessing is what we need to do in this moment,” Fuentes said.
Vasquez’s office said she is one of two Cook County commissioners who authored a resolution asking other county agencies to alert the commissioners when ICE agents are seen inside county buildings or on public property. Those alerts go to volunteer community groups that respond to ICE operations in residential neighborhoods.
Vasquez said the Cook County Board is also looking for ways to prevent third party data brokers from mining county databases and contracts for personal information on residents and selling the data to ICE. The Trump administration is allowing ICE unprecedented access to personal information on millions of Americans held by the federal government, including health and tax records.
For example, Vasquez said private contractor LexisNexis manages data used by county criminal courts, and the company also has a lucrative $22 million data and surveillance contract with ICE that has so far avoided scrutiny from regulators. Critics say this gives ICE a “digital backdoor” to surveil people in the criminal legal system.
“We need to do everything we can to save as many people as we can as quickly as possible, and that means leaving no stone unturned,” Vasquez said.
Before you go — An urgent appeal for your support
Truthout relies on individual donations to publish independent journalism, free from political and corporate influence. In fact, we’re almost entirely funded by readers like you.
Unfortunately, donations are down. At a moment when our journalism is most necessary, we are struggling to meet our operational costs due to worsening political censorship.
Truthout may end this month in the red without additional help, so we’ve launched a fundraiser. We have 10 days to hit our $50,000 goal. Please make a tax-deductible gift to Truthout at this critical time!