Day 232

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

DHS launched Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area on 8 September 2025. Federal courts found that ICE had made warrantless arrests in breach of the 2022 Castañon Nava consent decree, after a senior DHS official had declared in a June 2025 email that ICE's obligations under it were terminated; the Seventh Circuit upheld the finding of substantial noncompliance and the decree's extension. Separately, Judge Sara Ellis restrained agents' use of tear gas, pepper balls and force against journalists and peaceful protesters, after incidents including tear gas fired without warning in Little Village. The Seventh Circuit curtailed parts of her orders and, after the plaintiffs dropped the case once the surge ended, vacated her preliminary injunction in March 2026.

Supreme Court stays order barring profiling-based stops

In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court issues an unsigned order staying a district-court order that barred immigration stops based on apparent race or ethnicity, language, location and occupation. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence says apparent ethnicity may be a 'relevant factor' among others; Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissent.

From: Systematic Racial Profiling in Immigration Enforcement and Wrongful Detention of US Citizens