Judge says he’ll order release of hundreds of people arrested under feds’ deportation blitz

Hundreds of people arrested and held in custody amid the feds’ deportation campaign in Chicago could soon be released on various conditions under a federal judge’s order Wednesday.

It’s not clear how many of the 615 people covered by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings’ order remain in the country. And the judge said he doesn’t want anyone released who poses a risk to public safety. He’s giving the Justice Department a chance to identify any such person.

But Cummings ultimately said he’s trying to restore the status quo that existed before the Trump administration recently changed its interpretation of immigration law. That policy shift subjected people across the country to mandatory detention who previously would have been given a chance at a bond hearing.

Immigration advocates have said that law only applies to “noncitizens who recently arrived at a border or port of entry,” not to people who have lived in the country for an extended period of time. And more than 100 judges across the country have apparently agreed with them.

But, Cummings noted in a hearing last month, “I do not think the government has appealed,” meaning no higher court has had a chance to weigh in.

The 600 or so detainees come from a list of roughly 1,800 arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Chicago area between June 11 and Oct. 7. Only about 750 of them remain in the country, and about 135 had final orders of removal or criminal convictions, according to Mark Fleming, a lawyer with the National Immigrant Justice Center.

More people could be released upon a review of all people arrested by ICE and Customs and Border Protection between June and November.

Among those detained under the Trump administration’s reading of the law was Ruben Torres Maldonado. His detention last month disrupted his 16-year-old daughter’s cancer treatment, and U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel later ordered that he be given a bond hearing.

“There is no dispute here that [Maldonado], a noncitizen, was ‘already in the country,’” Daniel wrote in an order. “He has been here for more than two decades.”

An immigration judge later ordered Maldonado’s release.

Justice Department attorneys have not appealed in Maldonado’s case. Maldonado went on to testify at a separate hearing about unsanitary conditions inside the ICE facility in Broadview, where he’d been held.

Now Cummings has entered this new ruling, in the case involving the so-called Castanon Nava settlement agreement. It restricts the ability of ICE agents, and anyone working with them, to make warrantless arrests in Illinois and nearby states.

Cummings last month extended the agreement into February.

The judge said Wednesday that staff attorneys at the courthouse reviewed a mountain of petitions recently filed at the courthouse from people challenging the Trump administration’s reading of the immigration law.

Cummings said that 54 of those people were arrested at work, including 20 landscapers and four ride-share or taxi drivers. Twenty were arrested commuting to or from work, he added, and nine were arrested at a Home Depot or Menards, “presumably either seeking work or to pick up supplies.”

Seven were also arrested at an “immigration-related hearing,” Cummings said, while 11 were arrested in public places like a park, gas station or even a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru.

“It seems highly likely to me that at least some of those individuals are among the 615 detainees who are not subject to mandatory detention,” Cummings said. He also found them unlikely to be members of gangs, “assorted other ne’er-do-wells” or the “worst of the worst.”

Justice Department lawyers asked Cummings to delay his order, and he agreed not to require the release until Nov. 21. The feds’ request for a stay could also signal that an appeal is on the way.