Lawsuit puts Illinois on offensive against ‘menacing’ immigration raids
[January 13, 2026]
By Brenden Moore
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois and Chicago sued the Trump administration Monday,
seeking to severely limit immigration agents’ authority in the state
after accusing the feds of unleashing an “organized bombardment” to
coerce state and local officials to change their immigration policies.
State and city leaders want to end the feds’ “roving patrol” policy of
interrogating people they encounter on the street about their
citizenship and immigration status without any probable cause. They’re
also seeking to limit crowd control tactics such as using tear gas to
disperse nonviolent crowds and to prevent the feds from scanning the
biometric information of state residents.
“Border Patrol agents and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
officers have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law,”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement. “They
randomly, and often violently, question residents. Without warrants or
probable cause, they brutally detain citizens and non-citizens alike.
They use tear gas and other chemical weapons against bystanders,
injuring dozens, including children, the elderly and local police
officers.”
Raoul, along with the city of Chicago, filed the 103-page lawsuit in the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. It accused
the federal government of applying pressure over policy differences
through means such as withholding federal funds, attempting to deploy
the National Guard and, most disruptively, executing an immigration
enforcement operation described by state officials as “causing turmoil
and imposing a climate of fear.”
It also seeks to prevent immigration enforcement at “sensitive
locations” without “appropriate reasoning,” including courthouses,
schools, social service organizations and medical facilities. And it
seeks to bar immigration agents from “trespassing” on private property
to make arrests, in violation of the 4th Amendment. The suit argues
immigration agents only have the authority to do so within 25 miles of a
U.S. Border to prevent illegal entry to the country.
The state is asking the court to find that the federal government’s
“menacing, violent, and unlawful incursion” violates the 10th Amendment,
and to order federal agents to stop using tactics that exceed their
statutory authority.
‘Unlawful tactics, unnecessary escalations’
Gov. JB Pritzker released a statement in support of the lawsuit, writing
that “in the face of the Trump Administration’s cruelty and
intimidation, Illinois is standing up against the attacks on our
people.”
“Today, Illinois is once again taking Donald Trump to court to hold his
administration accountable for their unlawful tactics, unnecessary
escalations, and flagrant abuses of power,” Pritzker said.
The lawsuit names, among others, Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd
Lyons, and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino — the public face of
DHS’ Operation Midway Blitz immigration enforcement campaign — as
defendants.
Much of the lawsuit pulls from claims brought in an earlier suit by
media organizations and protestors who challenged the feds’ use-of-force
tactics. The plaintiffs motioned for the case to be reassigned to the
same judge in that challenge, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, according
to reporting by the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. Previously, she
issued an injunction against use of force in that case, but the 7th
Circuit Court of Appeals later stayed it.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told Capitol News Illinois in a
statement the latest suit was “baseless.”
“The fact is that sanctuary politicians in Illinois and Chicago released
violent criminals including murderers, rapists, drug dealers,
pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists, onto its streets and their
dereliction of duty cost lives—just ask Katie Abraham’s father,”
McLaughlin said, referring to a 20-year-old Glenview woman who was
killed in a hit-and-run crash last year allegedly by a Guatemalan in the
country without legal authorization. “This is a baseless lawsuit, and we
look forward to proving that in court.”
Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed a
similar lawsuit Monday seeking to block a surge of immigration
enforcement in that state. It comes less than a week after an ICE agent
shot 37-year-old American citizen Renee Nicole Good at close range while
she was apparently attempting to flee a traffic stop.
‘Campaign of coercion’
The Illinois lawsuit claims that Midway Blitz is part of a “campaign of
coercion” by the Trump administration attempting to force state and
local governments, including Illinois and the city of Chicago, to change
their sanctuary immigration policies.
The state’s TRUST Act, signed by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017,
generally prohibits state and local law enforcement from assisting the
federal government with immigration enforcement unless a federal
criminal warrant is presented.
Chicago has had “sanctuary city” status since 1985.
[to top of second column]
|
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino gets into a truck after he
was called to testify in a hearing in Chicago in October. (Capitol
News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
The state and federal policies are meant to foster trust between
immigrant communities and law enforcement by ensuring that
interactions do not result in immigration detention or deportation.
But these policies, which predominate in the nation’s blue states
and blue cities, have been the target of ire from the Trump
administration, which has accused state and local jurisdictions of
impeding their mass deportation goals.
Trump sued Illinois, Chicago and Cook County last year seeking to
invalidate the state and local policies, but the challenge was
dismissed by a federal judge in July, who found that they were
protected under the 10th Amendment.
Federal ‘occupation’
Just six weeks after losing in court, DHS began its sweeping
immigration enforcement campaign targeting the Chicago region. The
department claims that it has resulted in the arrests of more than
4,500 immigrants in the country without legal authorization.
But the raids often led to violent confrontations between masked
federal agents and protestors during various operations in the city
and suburbs, including near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement
processing facility in suburban Broadview.
Confrontations initiated by immigration officers resulted in two
shootings, including one with deadly consequences, during the height
of Midway Blitz. An ICE agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas
González in Franklin Park in September after he attempted to flee a
traffic stop. In October, a federal agent shot Marimar Martinez five
times in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. She survived and the
U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has dropped all charges against
her.
Characterizing it as a federal “occupation” of a sovereign state,
the suit accuses the feds of sending armed immigration agents to
roam city streets to question people about their citizenship status,
capture and retain biometric data without consent, arrest people
without a warrant or probable cause and deploy tear gas and other
chemical agents in residential neighborhoods and trespass on private
property — all while concealing their identities with face masks and
covering up license plates.
The suit includes a laundry list of documentation, alleging, for
instance that federal agents deployed tear gas and other chemicals
without warning at least 49 times in 18 separate incidents in
Chicago over a 90-day period in 2025.
And following the launch of a “plate watch” hotline in late October,
at least thirty-five distinct license plates were reported being
swapped or used on more than one federal vehicle operated by Border
Patrol or ICE, according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s
office, which sent a “cease and desist” letter to DHS in October
over the practice.
Return of Midway blitz?
While Midway Blitz has wound down in recent weeks, federal officials
have been teasing a return with even larger numbers of agents in
March. The filing includes Bovino stating, “Don’t call it a
comeback; we’re gonna be here for years.”
The state is asking the court to bar Border Patrol agents from
conducting civil immigration enforcement in Illinois, arguing that
they are “not authorized or trained for large-scale removal
enforcement in the interior of the United States.”
It’s also asking a judge to declare that tactics such as roving
patrols, warrantless arrests, deploying tear gas and swapping
plates, at least in this context, are in violation of federal law.
The plaintiffs want those tactics barred in the future.
The lawsuit is just the latest in a litany of litigation between the
state and federal government. Raoul has filed or joined in more than
four-dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration over the past
year, challenging everything from cuts to congressionally
appropriated state funding to Trump’s now-aborted push to deploy
National Guard troops to Chicago over the strenuous objections of
Illinois’ elected leaders.
Actions like those, Raoul alleged in the latest lawsuit, are part of
the Trump administration’s “coercion” campaign.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month denied an emergency appeal from
the Trump administration seeking to lift a temporary restraining
order put in place by a lower court preventing the deployment of
troops in Illinois. The underlying case Is still working through the
courts, though Trump late last month dropped plans to deploy troops
to American cities.
The federal government filed a lawsuit earlier this month
challenging a new state law that allows Illinois residents to sue
federal immigration agents who arrest them in or near courthouses or
if they believe their constitutional rights were violated. Like the
latest lawsuit, the case largely rests on the 10th Amendment. |
