Operation Midway Blitz: Chicago Immigration Surge Breached a Court Decree on Warrantless Arrests and Drew Orders Limiting Force Against Protesters and Press (2025)

What Happened

On 8 September 2025 DHS launched Operation Midway Blitz, an immigration enforcement surge across the Chicago area. Border Patrol agents under chief Gregory Bovino joined ICE in neighbourhood sweeps, and protests grew outside the ICE processing facility in Broadview and in neighbourhoods where agents operated (DHS; WBEZ).

Warrantless arrests in breach of a court decree

Since 2022 ICE's Chicago area of responsibility, covering six Midwestern states, has been bound by a consent decree in Castañon Nava v. DHS. ICE agreed to a policy "barring many vehicle stops and warrantless, 'collateral' arrests", meaning arrests without a warrant unless agents have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before one can be obtained, as federal law requires (ACLU of Illinois; Seventh Circuit).

On 11 June 2025 a senior DHS official sent an email "unilaterally declaring that ICE's obligations under the Consent Decree were terminated", according to the Seventh Circuit. Judge Jeffrey Cummings found that 22 of 26 people identified by the plaintiffs had been arrested in violation of the decree earlier in 2025. He also rejected ICE's use of field-issued I-200 forms, citing an ICE Academy training slide that told officers they could carry a blank I-200 for each collateral arrest "so that an individual flight risk analysis is not needed" (Seventh Circuit). On 7 October 2025 he found ICE had failed to substantially comply with the decree, extended it by 118 days and ordered retraining and reporting of every warrantless arrest since June (ABC7 Chicago; Seventh Circuit). The plaintiffs documented 30 more violations, warrantless arrests of Latino residents, during Midway Blitz (ACLU of Illinois).

On 13 November 2025 Judge Cummings ordered the release of 13 class members whom both sides agreed were arrested in violation of the law, and of about 442 "potential class members" (Seventh Circuit). DHS records reported by CBS Chicago showed that of about 600 people detained in the area between June and mid-October, only 16 had criminal histories flagging them as high public-safety risks.

The Seventh Circuit refused to stay the decree's extension, finding the district court had cited "multiple instances where Defendants had failed to comply with the Consent Decree while making warrantless arrests" and the DHS official's June proclamation. It stayed most of the release order pending individual determinations (11 December 2025). On 5 May 2026 it affirmed the extension and the release of class members found to have been arrested without a warrant, and reversed the release of "potential class members" and of people arrested on I-200 administrative warrants. In February 2026 the government acknowledged 46 arrests that violated the decree but, according to the plaintiffs, refused to release those people, or to release them without conditions; on 17 February 2026 the court ordered four still in custody released (ACLU of Illinois).

Force against protesters and the press

On 9 October 2025, in a suit brought by news organisations, journalists and protesters, Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using tear gas, pepper spray and other weapons against journalists and peaceful protesters who posed no serious threat. It required two warnings before riot-control weapons were used and visible identification on agents' uniforms; at a later hearing the judge pressed Bovino to ensure agents wore body cameras (WBEZ).

Reported incidents continued. On 23 October agents fired tear gas into a crowd in Little Village; Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez said he heard no order to disperse, and video presented to the court indicated that Bovino himself threw at least two canisters. DHS said agents had given "multiple warnings" (WTTW). At a November hearing the Rev. David Black, a plaintiff, testified with video that he was shot with pepper balls at least seven times outside Broadview, and another witness testified that agents fired pepper balls and tear gas without warning and that an agent in an armoured vehicle pointed a weapon at protesters (WTTW). Judge Ellis ordered Bovino to report to court every weekday. On 31 October the Seventh Circuit vacated that order, finding it made the court an "inquisitor" and a supervisor of the executive branch, in breach of the separation of powers.

On 6 November Judge Ellis certified a class and granted a preliminary injunction covering federal law enforcement across the district, later explained in more than 170 pages of findings in which she found the government's witnesses not credible. The Seventh Circuit stayed the injunction as overbroad. When the surge wound down, the plaintiffs, saying the roughly 200–225 agents led by Bovino had left the district and they had received no reports of the challenged conduct since 8 November, dismissed their case and agreed not to oppose vacatur. On 5 March 2026 the Seventh Circuit vacated the injunction and its findings without ruling on their merits. Judge Easterbrook dissented (Seventh Circuit).

Legal Analysis

Arbitrary arrest. Warrantless arrests without probable cause of flight breach 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(2), the Fourth Amendment and, internationally, Article 9 of the ICCPR, which bars arbitrary arrest. The consent decree findings, affirmed in part on appeal, establish that ICE made such arrests during 2025, including during Midway Blitz, and failed to substantially comply with a binding court decree. The scale that is judicially established is dozens of individual violations, not the hundreds first ordered released: the Seventh Circuit reversed the release of potential class members whose cases had not been individually decided.

Defiance of a binding order. The most serious finding is structural. A senior DHS official declared ICE's obligations under a court-approved consent decree terminated, and the district court found, and the Seventh Circuit accepted, substantial noncompliance. That is an executive agency treating a binding court order as optional.

Force against assembly and press. Using chemical agents against peaceful protesters and journalists engages the First Amendment and ICCPR Articles 19 and 21. A federal judge found the conduct serious enough to restrain, but her findings no longer stand: they were vacated after the plaintiffs abandoned the case, without any appellate ruling on whether they were right. The appeals court also criticised the injunction as overbroad and flagged doubts about the plaintiffs' standing.

Strongest defence argument. The government argues that its agents faced rocks, bottles and threats; that the Ellis injunction was overbroad and has been vacated; and that many of the people ordered released were arrested on administrative warrants, which the Seventh Circuit agreed fell outside the release order. These points are partly right: they cut the use-of-force findings and the release order down considerably. They do not answer the affirmed finding of substantial noncompliance with the consent decree, or DHS's declared termination of its obligations under it.

International crime? None is in play. There is no armed conflict, and arbitrary arrests and excessive force by immigration agents have not been shown to form part of an attack on a civilian population under Article 7.

Why This Grade

This entry is graded critical, with no war-crime classification.

• The critical grade expressly covers defiance of binding court orders. A senior DHS official declared ICE's obligations under a federal consent decree terminated, and the courts found substantial noncompliance through warrantless arrests during this operation. The Seventh Circuit affirmed that finding.
• The use-of-force material supports the picture of an operation conducted with disregard for legal limits, but its judicial findings were vacated, so it is reported here as testimony and press reporting, not as a finding.
• The entry would drop to severe if the consent-decree findings were reversed. As of the Seventh Circuit's May 2026 judgment, they stand in part.

Confidence in this grade: medium.