Judge Orders ICE to Release 600+ Illegal Migrants

The 2022 Castañon Nava consent decree is in effect until February 2026 and covers Illinois and five other neighboring states. Last month, Judge Cummings ruled federal immigration agents had violated the agreement in its recent immigration "blitz."

As the I-Team has previously reported, the consent decree restricts federal immigration agents from conducting warrantless arrests unless they have reason to believe a person is in the country illegally and are a flight risk.

Over the last month, attorneys on both sides of the case have been working to identify how many people were arrested by immigration agents in violation of that agreement.

Earlier this week, Fleming told the I-Team the list of people arrested potentially in violation of the consent decree has grown to more than 3,000 people.

"Our initial analysis is that it's over 3,000 arrests," Fleming previously told the I-Team. "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."

So far, Fleming said on Monday that ICE has produced a list of 3,800 people, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol has given a list of 1,200 people, but he stressed that there may be duplicate entries on both lists, so his team does not have a solid total figure yet. Those lists were only through October 7.

Attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security have argued that Congress stripped federal courts of their authority to grant parole to large groups of immigrants in ICE custody.

In their filings, government attorneys argue, "Congress has vested the authority to grant parole solely with the Secretary of Homeland Security... Federal courts cannot order the Department of Homeland Security to release any aliens on parole because Congress has stripped them of that authority."

In their review of people arrested by agents potentially in violation of the consent decree, Fleming said more than 1,000 people are no longer in the U.S., meaning they may have been deported already after signing voluntary removal orders.