Federal Judge Rules ICE Can’t Make Arrests Using ‘Blank Warrants,’ Making Racial Profiling More Difficult

Another day, another federal judge telling the Trump administration it can’t just keep violating civil rights like it’s a menu option at their favorite bar and grill.

As citizens are still grappling with news that the National Guard has arrived in Chicago at the command of President Donald Trump, and in the wake of “Operation Midway Blitz,” a judge has placed guardrails on the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they patrol the streets of the Windy City looking for brown people to abduct. According to the New York Times, on Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a long-running class-action lawsuit against ICE, and now there are strict restrictions on the federal agency’s legal ability to make arrests without warrants. Yes, that’s a thing a judge had to place restrictions on, because snatching people up without a proper warrant was a thing that was just accepted as business as usual until now.

From the Times:

The 52-page ruling from Magistrate Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings challenges the legal basis for one of ICE’S tools for making arrests — blank warrants that are often filled out by officers in the field. Under Tuesday’s order, those forms can be used only as a basis to arrest someone who has already received a notice to appear before an immigration judge.

That change alone sharply limits ICE’S authority to make “collateral arrests” of unknown individuals who officers encounter in the field, unless the agents have probable cause to believe those people are likely to escape before a warrant can be issued.

“If ICE can’t arrest them without a warrant, that really limits the use of racial profiling,” said Mark Fleming, a lawyer at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which represented the plaintiffs.

Whaaaaaah? Wait a minute — I thought ICE agents weren’t engaging in racial profiling. That’s what the Department of Homeland Security has said, and even admonished reporters for suggesting otherwise. The administration even denied it after a federal judge determined that ICE agents were racially profiling, and the administration took the case to the Supreme Court, which essentially ruled ICE agents can engage in racial profiling, which the administration continued to claim it wasn’t doing.

In fact, Judge Cummings addressed the Supreme Court ruling in his own decision, noting that U.S. citizens and legal residents could now be questioned or detained for sharing “commonalities” like ethnicity and language with “Latino foreign nationals,” and that, under those guidelines, the need for ICE agents to show probable cause has been heightened.

“Citizens, non-citizens with legal status, and foreign nationals are interwoven throughout ICE’s Chicago Area of Responsibility and American society in general,” the judge wrote.

Again, this should always have been a no-brainer. So, ICE agents were out here signing impromptu arrest warrants in the field because they saw somebody who just didn’t look right, and we’re to believe that never happened after some immigration cop spotted a darker-skinned man speaking Spanish in front of Home Depot?

Mind you, the class-action suit that resulted in this ruling isn’t the only one that has been filed against this federal administration. Last month, we reported that four Latino plaintiffs who are legal residents of Washington, D.C., filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing ICE of “blatant and explicit” racial profiling. In that case, the plaintiffs claim they were arrested without any warrant at all and held at ICE detention centers for weeks. One 51-year-old plaintiff said he was arrested in a Home Depot parking lot just after he finished shopping and was held at a detention center for a month before he was released.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that the class-action suit in Chicago involves more than quadruple the individuals involved in the D.C. case.

More from the Times:

The order focuses on the arrest of 22 individuals. Eleven of them were working at a restaurant in Liberty, Mo., when ICE took them into custody on Feb. 7, less than a month after Mr. Trump returned to office.

Judge Cummings found that ICE did not have reason to believe that the individuals were “reasonably likely” to escape before the agency could obtain a warrant, in violation of a consent agreement that the agency had entered into in 2022, when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was still in office.

In the agreement, ICE denied the plaintiffs’ allegations and did not admit to any wrongdoing by its officers.

According to the plaintiffs, another 11 people were arrested in violation of the agreement in the Chicago area and were taken into custody by ICE.

Unfortunately, the judge’s order isn’t permanent, and only extends Biden’s consent decree for 118 days rather than the three years the plaintiffs requested it be extended for. So, come February, ICE agents might have free rein to commence snatching people up with warrants no judge had even gotten a peek at.

Still, this is a win for the plaintiffs, the people of Chicago and anyone who is tired of watching agents for the MAGA regime running around like stormtroopers serving The Empire. And while the judge’s order is currently confined to Chicago, it requires ICE to send out a policy statement explaining the legal requirements to make an arrest to all ICE officers nationwide. The Times noted that the ruling “could influence the courts’ interpretations of ICE’S legal authorities in similar cases elsewhere.”

Hopefully, that is the case. As I’ve written previously, federal judges who are willing to stand up to Trump and his goons are currently the last line of defense in the battle to preserve checks and balances, and they appear to be the people’s last hope in ensuring that federal agents can’t just violate our civil rights on a whim.

It’s a sad, scary state of affairs, but this is where we are.

SEE ALSO:

National Guard Arrives In Chicago As Trump Threatens Insurrection Act

Chicago ICE-Free Zones: What Residents Need To Know About The New Order

The People Of Chicago Are Pushing Back Against ICE

Kristi Noem Tells Reporter Not To Talk About ICE’s Racial Profiling

Latinos In DC Accuse ICE Of Racial Profiling In Class Action Suit

The Supreme Court Rules ICE Can Engage In Racial Profiling

Department Of Homeland Security Claims ICE Doesn’t Engage In Racial Profiling

Federal Judge Rules ICE Racially Profiles