Judge's Order To Release All ICE Detainees Is Stayed by Seventh Circuit Pending Appeal

Biden Admin. entered into "consent decree" to not detain certain illegals scheduled for deportation hearing and Chicago Judge ordered enforcement of that agreement -- paused for now.

This one is a bit tangled so bear with me a bit while I unpack the background.

There currently exists a legal dispute with respect to the circumstances that justify a WARRANTLESS arrest for being illegally in the United States. The arrest leads to detention of the alien in an ICE facility while they await deportation proceedings. But the statute authorizing arrest AND DETENTION has a few strings attached, namely that a warrantless arrest is only allowed when there is probable cause to believe that the alien will escape before a warrant can be obtained. The legal dispute that exists is whether ICE’s current detention policies satisfy all the conditions required under the statute.

There have been several decisions go against the Trump Administration so far — one is reflected in a very long Opinion issued by Senior Judge Beryl Howell in the District of Columbia, which I address in more detail below.

But the issue in the new decision coming out of the Seventh Circuit is a bit different — it involves a “Consent Decree” agreed to by the Biden Administration wherein it agreed that ICE would not make warrantless arrests of illegal aliens. The plaintiffs in the case are alleging that the Trump Administration’s ICE arrest policies violate that Consent Decree — which the plaintiffs want applied nationwide — and asked a federal judge in Chicago to order the release of all detainees from Operation Midway Blitz because their arrests and detention was in violation of the Consent Decree. The Trump DOJ has not challenged the validity of the existing Decree or the power of the District Court that entered it in 2022.

The Consent Decree is called the Castanon-Nava Agreement. In 2022 the Biden Administration Civil Rights Division resolved a 2018 lawsuit filed against the Trump Administration with a “Consent Decree” wherein it promised that ICE — under any Administration — would not conduct warrantless arrests of illegal aliens for the purposes of initiating deportation proceedings. Of course the Biden Administration ICE was never going to do that — they didn’t arrest anyone.