Immigrants In Illinois Are Finding Success Challenging Their Detention In Federal Court

This story was reported by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity in partnership with Injustice Watch.

CHICAGO — One cold morning in late October, Nayra Guzmán, 22, gingerly stepped out of her family’s Cicero apartment, with a postpartum wrap around her waist she had worn since giving birth to her daughter in an emergency cesarean section 15 days earlier.

Guzmán was on her way to a hospital, a 30-minute trip she’d made every day for the past two weeks, to breastfeed her daughter, who was born with low oxygen levels and remained in the neonatal intensive care unit.

But just as Guzmán, her brother, and their mother approached their Ford Expedition parked in front of the apartment, they were surrounded by about 10 masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who drove up in three vehicles to box in their white SUV. The agents demanded proof of their legal residency in the U.S.

The Guzmáns presented their work permits and documents showing that they had been in the U.S. since 2022, when they fled cartel violence in the Mexican state of Michoacán and sought asylum at the Tijuana-San Diego border.

But it didn’t matter. The ICE agents arrested all three, saying the documents weren’t enough to prove their legal residency. The agents handcuffed them and hauled them off in a white van to an ICE facility in Broadview, just outside of Chicago.

Soon after arriving at the Broadview facility, Guzmán was allowed to use her phone to call her father. “Please look after the baby,” she told him.

Guzmán’s father moved quickly. He visited the baby at the hospital and then contacted the family’s immigration attorney, who was able to file a wrongful detention lawsuit — known as a habeas corpus petition — on the same day at the federal court in Chicago.

Before 2025, such habeas cases were rarely filed by people held in immigration detention. During the four years under the Biden administration, only 10 immigrants filed habeas cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which covers Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

But in the first 15 months of President Donald Trump’s second term, 274 immigration habeas cases were filed in the Northern District of Illinois. The vast majority were filed after the launch of Operation Midway Blitz, the federal immigration enforcement campaign that began in September and led to the detention of nearly 3,800 immigrants across the Chicagoland area.

The spike in habeas cases follows the Trump administration’s nationwide enforcement campaign and mandatory detention policy that have left immigrants with little opportunity to be released on bond.

A review of the 274 immigration habeas cases by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity and Injustice Watch shows that immigrants have been finding sympathetic ears at the court.

Federal judges have so far ruled in 178 cases, and they have sided with immigrants 94% of the time, ordering the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to release them from custody or give them a bond hearing.

The Guzmáns were detained for about 36 hours before a federal judge ordered their release, sparing them from transfers to immigration detention facilities in Kentucky and Michigan that had been scheduled for the following day.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Guzmán said. “It was nice to be able to return to the baby. We were resigned to the fact that they were going to take us” to the detention centers in other states.

The review of the habeas cases also found that:

• Many immigrants had established roots in the community. More than 140 had lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer, and 124 had U.S. citizen children.
• In at least 86 cases, immigrants were arrested while they were trying to comply with immigration proceedings — such as showing up for immigration court hearings or DHS check-ins. Many of them were living under Temporary Protected Status or had pending asylum cases.
• Even though the Trump administration has said its immigration enforcement campaigns are focused on arresting and deporting violent criminals — those they call the “worst of the worst” — most immigrants who filed habeas cases had no criminal history. DHS mentioned criminal records in its responses to only 34 of the habeas cases — mostly involving low-level traffic violations.
• In one case, DHS alleged that a Venezuelan immigrant was a member of the gang Tren de Aragua, but the agency provided no evidence of gang ties, and the immigrant said he had no criminal history either in the U.S. or in Venezuela other than a minor traffic violation. In another case, the agency alleged that a Mexican immigrant had a domestic battery conviction from 2006. In a third case, the agency alleged that an Iranian immigrant had been arrested for “crimes involving both ‘bodily injury to another person’ and ‘larceny’” — though the court later concluded that his rap sheet didn’t include larceny.

Carlos Estrada, a senior litigation attorney at the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, said it was unjust for DHS to indiscriminately detain all immigrants without looking into their ties to the community and assessing whether they are a flight risk.

“They’re just arresting thousands of people who often have been here for years, who have families and deep roots in the community and who are following the rules,” Estrada said. “Really, for most of these folks, the government could process their cases without detaining them.”

In a statement, Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for DHS, said more immigrants are filing habeas cases and finding success due to “many activist judges” who have “attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate.”

“Despite a historic number of injunctions, DHS is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens” from detention centers “to their final destination — home,” Bis said.

Mandatory Detention Policy Leading To Spike In Habeas Cases

The cases filed in the Northern District of Illinois are among thousands of habeas cases filed by people held in immigration detention across the country.

Since January 2025, more than 55,000 immigration habeas cases have been filed nationwide, according to Habeas Dockets, which is maintained by the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to making immigration-related court records more accessible.

In Minnesota, for example, more than 1,300 immigration habeas cases have been filed since January 2025  — many of them following Operation Metro Surge, the deployment of more than 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to the Twin Cities beginning in December. According to local media reports, the sheer number of cases pushed the federal court system to its limits: Federal judges struggled to get ICE officials to comply with orders, immigration attorneys lost track of their clients and a federal prosecutor even broke down in court over the workload.

Meanwhile, the courts in the Northern District of Illinois have seen a comparably smaller number of immigration habeas cases since January 2025. That’s due in large part to the fact that Illinois banned immigration detention in the state in 2021, and most immigrants are transferred to immigration detention facilities in other states shortly after their arrest. A habeas case needs to be filed in the court that has jurisdiction over the facility where the petitioner is being held.

This influx of habeas cases across the country isn’t random — it’s the result of the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy for all immigrants who are deemed deportable.

In July 2025, Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director, issued a memo outlining the administration’s new guidelines for detention, saying most immigrants picked up by ICE “may not be released for the duration of their removal proceedings.”

This policy broke a long-standing practice. Immigrants already residing in the U.S., often with families and roots in their communities, used to be able to get released on bond while their deportation cases were pending at immigration courts. But with its policy, the Trump administration is taking a position that even longtime residents — not just those who arrive at the border or a port of entry — are considered “applicants for admission” and subject to mandatory detention.

“The government knows that if they can just put someone in detention, there’s a decent chance that that person will choose to take voluntary departure — meaning essentially to self-deport — to get out of detention because it’s just that bad,” Estrada said.

Hundreds of federal judges have since rejected the Trump administration’s policy and ordered that immigrants be released or granted a bond hearing. Though some rulings have been reversed on appeal, thousands of immigrants across the country have been able to secure their release.

In many states, immigrants have been filing their habeas cases with assistance from legal aid attorneys, including ones from the Illinois Habeas Project — a partnership among the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the Chicago Bar Foundation, the National Immigrant Justice Center and other legal groups — which has represented more than 100 Illinois immigrants.

One of those immigrants was Samuel Ochoa Ochoa, a Venezuelan man who was ordered released in October after 126 days in detention. The ruling in Ochoa Ochoa’s case — one of the first immigration habeas cases filed in Illinois since the start of Trump’s second term — has since been cited by other immigrants in 186 habeas cases as a favorable precedent, according to Westlaw, an online legal database.

Other immigrants who won their habeas cases in recent months included a Mexican mother of a 10-month-old who was still breastfeeding. ICE agents arrested her while she was driving her taxi near O’Hare International Airport and detained her at the Broadview facility, where she didn’t have access to a lactation room and couldn’t pump breast milk for her daughter, according to court records.

“You’re taking a very small child away from their only source of nourishment,” said Shelby Vcelka, the mother’s attorney. “So it’s just a heartbreaking situation.”

Vcelka helped file a habeas case on Oct. 30, and a federal judge ordered the mother be released the next day.

Another successful habeas case was filed in October by a 60-year-old Mexican tamale vendor, who had been selling her street food in Pilsen for more than a decade. Since the death of her husband in 2023, she had been working to pay for her diabetes medication and provide for her son. But ICE agents surrounded her tamale cart and detained her when she couldn’t provide proof of her legal status, according to court records. She was released on Oct. 22 — 11 days after she filed her habeas case.

A father, also from Mexico, responsible for a 7-year-old boy with several severe medical conditions also won his case, in November. His son suffered from kidney disease, hypothyroidism and chronic respiratory failure, requiring a feeding tube and ventilator at night. While he was detained for 22 days, the entire onus of his son’s care fell on the boy’s mother, according to court records.

‘Treated Worse’ Than In Prison

The speed with which the Guzmáns and the breastfeeding mother from Mexico were released is not the norm.

Even when their cases were ultimately successful, immigrants remained in detention for an average of 29 days — and up to more than a year — while they waited for the ruling, the review of the habeas cases shows.

Immigration attorneys told the Investigative Project that given the length of detention, many immigrants choose to voluntarily depart — or “self-deport” — even if they have a strong habeas case.

When immigrants self-deport, their habeas cases are voluntarily dismissed. In all, 67 of the 274 cases filed since January 2025 have been voluntarily dismissed.

Immigrants who choose to fight on with their habeas cases are held, at least initially, at the Broadview facility, a small, two-story warehouse about 15 miles west of downtown Chicago. The facility has four holding rooms — three for men and one for women — and can hold a maximum of 236 immigrants for 12 hours each, according to a 2018 audit conducted under the Prison Rape Elimination Act. In June 2025, ICE extended the maximum duration of detention at facilities like the one in Broadview to 72 hours.

In October, the MacArthur Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois filed a lawsuit against DHS over conditions at the Broadview facility. The lawsuit alleges that the facility lacks basic necessities for longer detention; it has no functioning showers or drinking water besides bottles of water that are handed out. Justice Department attorneys have also acknowledged that the facility has no beds. And immigration attorneys also told the Investigative Project that their clients received moldy sandwiches and struggle to contact their families.

Danielle Berkowsky, a MacArthur Justice Center attorney who worked on the lawsuit, said many immigrants chose to self-deport because of their detention experience at the Broadview facility, even though they had some path to U.S. citizenship. “The conditions are so bad that they just want to leave,” she said.“They just can’t be there anymore.”

(Disclosure: Injustice Watch board member Alexa Van Brunt is the Illinois director of the MacArthur Justice Center and is involved in this lawsuit. She played no role in this story.)

Bis, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency provides immigrants with three meals a day, as well as “clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries.”

“In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” Bis said.

The lawsuit also alleges that there is no medical staff at the Broadview facility, and immigrants often struggle to receive prescription medicines. Berkowsky said ICE agents at the facility often ignore calls for medical attention.

“They’re not even giving people ibuprofen,” Berkowsky said. “There’s not anything happening until it’s an emergency — then they can call 911 and get an ambulance in there.”

In November, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring DHS to provide immigrants with clean bedding mats, toiletries and at least three full meals a day. The order remains in place while the settlement negotiations continue.

Several immigrants alleged in their habeas cases that their medical needs also went unmet at the Broadview facility: Some immigrants with diabetes said they didn’t receive their regular medication. One allegedly slept on the concrete floor for five nights with about 50 others without access to his blood pressure medication. Another needed retina injections to prevent an eye condition from worsening but said he couldn’t receive them, according to court records.

“As someone who also does prison litigation for people who have been convicted of crimes, people are being treated worse than I’ve heard at some prisons,” Berkowsky said.

Back in October, during her 36-hour stay at the Broadview facility, Guzmán said she had some awkward moments with ICE agents relating to her medical conditions.

First, as she was being booked into the facility, Guzmán had to show in front of three skeptical ICE agents that she was still recovering from her C-section. Despite the pain, she had to remove her postpartum wrap to show them her wound.

“It looks fine,” one agent remarked at the sight of the wound, Guzmán said.

Guzmán explained to the agents that, even though the wound appeared closed from the outside, she was still healing from within — a process complicated by her diabetes, she said. She was eventually allowed to put the wrap back on.

Then, around midday the next day, Guzmán said she began getting dizzy and suffered from cramps and intolerable pain in her lower abdomen. When she was allowed to use her glucose meter, which she was carrying with her at the time of her arrest, she found that her glucose level was dangerously high. She said the agents panicked and almost called an ambulance, but she declined the paramedics, telling the agents that she just needed to take her insulin and pain medication, both of which she was also carrying with her. She was allowed to take her medication, and her glucose levels stabilized within 20 minutes.

Bis said it’s been a “longstanding practice” for DHS to provide “comprehensive medical care” to immigrants in ICE custody. “This includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care,” she said. “For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

Mandatory Detention Policy Likely Headed To Supreme Court

In the Northern District of Illinois, just 11 immigration habeas cases since January 2025 were ruled in favor of the government. Judges denied six cases due to procedural and technical issues, and another case was denied after it was transferred to a Trump-appointed judge in Missouri. The other four cases were denied by Judge Martha Pacold, a Trump appointee in Illinois who agreed with the administration’s interpretation of the law.

In a case filed by a Mexican immigrant, Pacold ruled that he had not been “lawfully admitted” into the country. “As a matter of statute, petitioner is properly being detained without bond,” she wrote.

DHS has appealed some immigration habeas cases, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, has ruled on only one case — a split decision that didn’t fully address the legality of the Trump administration’s policy.

Elsewhere in the country, appeals courts have issued mixed rulings. Earlier this year, the appeals courts for the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans, and the 8th Circuit, based in St. Louis, agreed with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law and ruled in favor of DHS, giving the agency permission to detain immigrants without bond.

“After reviewing carefully the relevant provisions and structure of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, the statutory history, and Congressional intent, we conclude that the government’s position is correct,” the 5th Circuit ruled.

But in recent weeks, the appeals courts for the 2nd, 6th and 11th circuits, based in New York City, Cincinnati, and Atlanta, respectively, ruled against the Trump administration’s detention policy.

The 2nd Circuit’s ruling, written by a Trump appointee, Joseph Bianco, said the administration’s interpretation would “send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society, straining our already overcrowded detention infrastructure, incarcerating millions, separating families and disrupting communities.”

Mark Feldman, an attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the conflicting appellate rulings will eventually have to be resolved. “I would say that question is without a doubt headed to the Supreme Court,” he said.

Bis, the DHS spokesperson, said the Trump administration will eventually prevail at the high court. “While some judicial activists seek to thwart much needed changes like this, DHS has been vindicated by the Supreme Court again and again,” she said. “DHS has the law and the facts on its side and will be vindicated on this issue too.”

While the legal landscape remains in flux, Guzmán said she is trying to focus on the future: She hopes to continue her studies and become an architect, a goal she’s had since long before arriving in the U.S. At home, she spends her days caring for her baby, who was released from the hospital after three months and is now doing well.

Still, ordinary moments are shadowed by fear. Guzmán said she worries about being detained again whenever she leaves home with her child or heads to a doctor’s appointment. Though she tries to live her life as she normally did before being detained, the possibility that another encounter with ICE could separate her from her family weighs heavily on her mind.

“I no longer leave home with the same tranquility I once had,” Guzmán said.

Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:

https://feeds.simplecast.com/qM5NtVST