Nov. 12 (UPI) — Hundreds of Chicago Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detainees will be freed soon after a judge ordered them released on bond.
On Wednesday, District Judge Jeff Cummings ordered bond for at least 615 people in a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups. The people held were arrested in Operation Midway Blitz, President Donald Trump‘s law enforcement operation in Chicago.
Those who will be released must be granted bond by noon Nov. 21, the ruling said. People eligible are those who have no mandatory detention orders and do not pose significant risk.
NBC 5 Chicago investigated the claim that the government has arrested the “worst of the worst,” showing that 85% of those arrested have no criminal convictions.
Cummings ordered the Department of Justice to review all remaining arrests through Wednesday and have a list by Nov. 19.
The plaintiffs in the case, the National Immigrant Justice Center, argued that hundreds of arrests by ICE agents were carried out in violation of a consent decree in Illinois and five neighboring states, according to 7 Eyewitness News. The decree puts limits on warrantless arrests.
The decree said that to arrest someone without a warrant, ICE agents must pre-determine if there is probable cause to believe the person is in the country illegally, and whether they are also a flight risk. Immigrant advocates say ICE has ignored those rules.
“As we’re digging into it, we are very concerned that many, if not most [of ICE arrests], are violations of our consent decree,” Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center told 7 Eyewitness News.
“Our initial analysis is that it’s over 3,000 arrests,” that are in violation of the consent decree, Fleming said.
“We’ve started to dig into the case file that they produced to us, and the vast majority are violations. If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree.”
The government’s attorneys have argued that Congress had stripped the courts of the power to grant parole to large groups of immigrants in ICE custody.
“Federal courts cannot order the Department of Homeland Security to release any aliens on parole because Congress has stripped them of that authority,” they said.