Category: Breaking Chicago News

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Hundreds of people swept up in Chicago’s immigration crackdown could soon be walking free.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the full release of 13 detained individuals, ruling their arrests ran afoul of a 2022 consent decree that limits how federal agents can make warrantless arrests. And that, attorneys say, is just the beginning.

Cummings gave government lawyers until Friday to comb through a list of 615 people detained at county jails and federal facilities nationwide and determine who qualifies for alternatives to detention — like an ankle monitor — while their immigration cases proceed. He said he would issue an order for their release next week, and in the meantime he temporarily paused deportation proceedings for people who might qualify for bond.

Those without criminal histories or prior removal orders could be released on a $1,500 bond. The order also bars the government from pressuring detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while their cases are pending.

Attorneys for the detainees hailed the move as a win — and said they plan to bring more cases.

“All of the tactics of ICE have been unlawful in the vast majority of arrests,” said Mark Fleming, a lawyer with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center. “We’re concerned they have no access to counsel and no understanding of what their situation is.”

The stakes are enormous. More than 3,300 people suspected of immigration violations have been arrested in Chicago and its suburbs since Operation Midway Blitz began in September — and many have already been deported or left on their own.

Justice Department attorney Will Weiland pushed back, telling Cummings that at least 12 people on the list of 615 were “high risk” and shouldn’t be released into communities. “Nothing has been easy with this case your honor,” he said.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the release order takes shape.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

CHICAGO URBAN DAILY

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— On the National Day of Protest against police brutality, one organization made its presence known in a way this city will not forget. Blocks United Chicago, standing in association with Families Demanding Justice, brought families and supporters into the streets on Thursday, October 22 — and announced themselves as a social justice revolutionary force to watch for the future.

This was not a rally staged for cameras. This was families — mothers, partners, brothers, and sisters carrying signs bearing the names of loved ones stolen by police violence — standing front and center, with Blocks United beside them, organized, disciplined, and unafraid. The message from the microphone was plain: do not wait until this fight lands on your doorstep. Join the families. Join Blocks United. Build the movement year-round, and come back in fuller force.

The timing gave the day its edge. The protest landed the same week the system justified the killing of a 1-year-old baby — Kohen Wiley of Senatobia, Mississippi — and speaker after speaker named it from the microphone: an epidemic of police brutality that will not end itself, and a movement that must be built by the people who refuse to accept it.

National activist Amir A.H. Shakur — Amir Shakur Speaks — leader of Freedom First International, stood in support of the action and saluted the organizers directly. “A huge thank you to Blocks United and Families Demanding Justice – Chicago for taking a powerful stand against police brutality on the National Day of Protest,” Shakur said. “They made their presence known as true revolutionaries — and a force to watch for the future.”

That is the story of October 22. In a season of press conferences and filings, Blocks United put bodies in the street and families in the front — the kind of organized, family-led pressure that leads the charge from here. Watch this organization. The ground is moving.

Watch the rally: https://facebook.com/61562239014993/posts/pfbid02PMCU6mm8uhvSe1Lpof2x9m4Q3ZJrjoVnAsZRMCKyEHwVQA6H3Sc5TWSgztXo1WCMl/

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for continuing coverage of this movement. Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

CHICAGO URBAN DAILY

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— National activist Amir A.H. Shakur — Amir Shakur Speaks — leader of Freedom First International, stood outside Chicago Police Headquarters on Thursday with Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, alongside families and community activists, demanding a full investigation and real correction of Chicago’s police accountability system after the city closed 654 misconduct investigations under the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s so-called “Timeliness Initiative.”

The numbers behind the demand are staggering. The 654 closed investigations named 1,041 individual Chicago police officers. Nearly 90 percent of the allegations involved civil-rights violations or excessive force. And the average case sat for roughly 1,020 days — nearly three years — before it was closed out.

“Chicago did not investigate these complaints — it buried them,” Shakur said. “When a system closes 654 files to make its numbers look better, that is not reform. That is a cover-up with a deadline. The people of this city deserve investigations that actually investigate — and somebody at the top of this system must be held accountable for what was done in their name.”

Standing with Rice — whose 12-year-old son Tamir was killed by police in Cleveland — and representatives of their affiliate organizations, Shakur laid out four demands for how these investigations must move forward:

1. Real investigations, on real timelines. Every complaint — especially those alleging civil-rights violations and excessive force — must be fully investigated, not closed out to satisfy a quota or a clock. Cases closed under the Timeliness Initiative that were never fully investigated must be identified and reopened.
2. Staff the system to do the job. COPA and the Bureau of Internal Affairs must be funded and staffed to carry the caseload, and district accountability sergeants must stop being diverted away from the accountability work they were assigned to do.
3. Discipline in the light, not behind closed doors. Serious police discipline belongs before the public Police Board — not in private, closed-door arbitration.
4. Named accountability. This backlog did not happen by accident; it happened by decision. The officials who chose speed over truth must answer for it — publicly.

And the battle does not stop at police headquarters. Shakur made clear the fight is now going to City Hall — straight to Mayor Brandon Johnson — because the system that buried these complaints answers to the fifth floor, and City Hall is going to answer for it.

Samaria Rice added a statement of her own: “The families of Tamir Rice and George Floyd will not hesitate. We are moving forward, and our focus is fighting police brutality.”

Shakur also addressed the death of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, killed on June 14 in Senatobia, Mississippi, renewing the coalition’s demand that Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and state authorities release the body-camera, dash-camera, and surveillance video of the shooting. The coalition — the Amir Shakur Speaks Broadcast Network, Samaria Rice and the Tamir Rice Foundation, Freedom First International, and Rodney Floyd of the Justice for George Floyd Committee — filed an emergency FOIA on October 20; under Mississippi law, the agencies’ response is due Thursday, October 29.

The press conference also announced a march against police brutality held later Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at 35th Street, with families and community members standing for an end to police violence and real accountability in Chicago and across the nation.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for continuing coverage of this fight for accountability. Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— The judge’s nightly leash on Chicago’s immigration chief didn’t survive 24 hours.

On Wednesday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals intervened and blocked the order that would have forced Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino to report to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis every day at 6 p.m. The one-page suspension landed before Bovino’s first late-afternoon meeting ever happened.

Ellis issued the order Tuesday, after weeks of tense encounters and increasingly aggressive tactics by agents working Operation Midway Blitz — the sweep that has netted more than 1,800 arrests since September and drawn complaints of excessive force. What drove her decision was the weekend scene on the Northwest Side, where Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade with tear gas.

“Halloween is on Friday,” Ellis said Tuesday. “I do not want to get violation reports from the plaintiffs that show that agents are out and about on Halloween, where kids are present and tear gas is being deployed.”

The Justice Department called her order “extraordinarily disruptive” while appealing it, arguing it “significantly interferes with the quintessentially executive function of ensuring the Nation’s immigration laws are properly enforced by waylaying a senior executive official critical to that mission on a daily basis.” Bovino himself told Fox News he was eager to talk to the judge.

Lawyers for the news outlets and activists suing over excessive force now have until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond in the appeals court.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this courtroom fight plays out.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— A federal judge just put the Trump administration’s immigration chief in Chicago on a nightly leash.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered Greg Bovino — the public face of the administration’s city-by-city immigration sweeps — to brief her in person every day at 6 p.m., reporting how his agents are enforcing the law and whether they’re staying within constitutional bounds. To every request, Bovino answered: “Yes, ma’am.”

The crackdown has netted over 1,800 arrests since September. But it was the images that drove the judge’s order — especially what happened over the weekend, when Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade on the Northwest Side with tear gas. Neighbors had gathered in the street as someone was arrested.

“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday.”

Ellis also demanded every use-of-force report since Sept. 2 from agents in Operation Midway Blitz — originally by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino told the court that would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.” He also faces a Friday deadline to get a body camera and complete training, after the judge required cameras when tear gas raised concerns agents weren’t following her orders. Attorneys for news outlets and protesters claim he violated her use-of-force order in Little Village, filing an image of him allegedly throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.

“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress,” Ellis said. “My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”

She predicted the new oversight would work: “I suspect that now knowing where we are and that he understands what I expect, I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas deployed in the next week.”

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this standoff unfolds.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— They spent the morning packing meals for families in need. Hours later, they were the ones bleeding on the sidewalk.

Three members of New Life Centers — two staff members and a peacekeeper — were wounded in a mass shooting last Friday outside the organization’s offices near West 26th Street and South Pulaski Road in Little Village. Police say four men were leaving a building in the 4000 block of West 26th when a white sedan pulled up and someone inside opened fire. The shooter fled south on Pulaski Road.

All three victims are stable and expected to recover.

New Life Centers has spent more than two decades working with young people and families in some of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods. The peacekeeper role exists for exactly this: to stand between the block and the bullet.

“We’re so grateful to God that none of the bullets hit vital organs,” Pastor Mark Jobe told the community in a message, asking people to pray for the victims’ recovery and for peace in Chicago. “Our team is recovering.”

No arrests have been announced. But the community isn’t waiting on police to answer — local leaders are planning a peace march in response to the violence.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the march takes shape.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Reports of shots fired outside the Kluczynski Federal Building in the Loop drew a swarm of Chicago police and federal agents Tuesday morning, shutting down the courtyard at one of downtown’s most heavily secured buildings.

Chicago police and Homeland Security vehicles lined up outside the building on Clark Street, and investigators stretched yellow and red police tape across the courtyard in front of the federal building. At least three evidence markers were visible near the entrance to what appeared to be a parking garage, and investigators could be seen working around a vehicle and near a bag.

Traffic kept moving on Clark Street, though police vehicles took over the first two lanes. By mid-morning, authorities had still not confirmed whether a shooting actually took place — and both Chicago police and Homeland Security were being pressed for answers.

The building at 230 South Dearborn houses federal offices and courts in the heart of the Loop, a block that sees thousands of workers and pedestrians on any given day. Any gunfire near it triggers a full-force response — and that’s exactly what happened.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as details come in.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Chicago sold a man’s car over $524.60 in parking tickets — and left the debt on his books too. Now the Supreme Court has declined to step in, but two justices from opposite ends of the bench are sounding the alarm.

On Oct. 19, the Supreme Court declined to hear O’Donnell v. City of Chicago — the case of Ryan O’Donnell, whose Toyota the city sold after he failed to pay $524.60 in parking tickets, without clearing his debt or giving him any of the proceeds. The city also seized Michael Goree’s Chevrolet because a co-signer of his car loan owed ticket debt on a different car.

Lower courts ruled against the two men, who filed a class-action suit. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the city’s rules serve a punitive purpose — a legitimate extension of police enforcement power.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote that she has “serious concerns” about that conclusion. The unusual alliance — the court’s liberal firebrand and its staunchest conservative — signals this Takings Clause fight is far from over. Sotomayor agreed the court shouldn’t take the case now, before more lower courts weigh in, but added: “I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights.”

The men’s lawyers argue the 7th Circuit’s ruling clashes with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County: if a house is sold to pay off tax debt, the government can’t keep the surplus.

Under Chicago’s law, the city can seize any vehicle from an owner with three unpaid tickets — or two in one year. If the owner can’t pay the tickets plus the cost of towing and storing the car, the city sells it.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the constitutional fight continues.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— A federal judge just cracked the door open — and hundreds of detained immigrants in the Chicago area could walk through it this week.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings signaled at a hearing Wednesday that he will order the release on bail of 13 people detained during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, ruling under a 2022 consent decree that limits how ICE can make so-called warrantless arrests.

But that’s only the start. Cummings gave government attorneys a Friday deadline to comb through a list of 615 people held in county jails and federal facilities nationwide and identify who qualifies for alternatives to detention — like an ankle monitor — under the decree. He said he’d issue the release order next week, and in the meantime paused deportation proceedings for people who might qualify.

Attorneys for the detainees called it a win. “All of the tactics of ICE have been unlawful in the vast majority of arrests,” said Mark Fleming of the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center.

They’re racing the clock. More than 3,300 people have been arrested in Chicago and the suburbs since “Operation Midway Blitz” began in September — and attorneys say many have already been deported with no access to lawyers and no understanding of their situations.

The Justice Department pushed back. Attorney Will Weiland told the judge at least 12 people on the list were “high risk” and shouldn’t be released into communities. “Nothing has been easy with this case your honor,” he said.

Cummings, who previously found that ICE violated the consent decree, listed arrests made since the crackdown began — people grabbed at work, out walking, even pulling through a fast-food drive-thru lane. “It also seems highly unlikely to me that any of these foreign nationals … fall into the category of what ICE has called the ‘worst of the worst,'” he said.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as this courtroom battle unfolds.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.

NEWS FLASH

CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— Wednesday night, downtown belonged to the teenagers — and for a while, nobody else.

Hundreds of teens poured into the Loop around State and Lake streets, and the night turned chaotic. Witnesses described crowds running through the streets, jumping on cars, and breaking into fights. Justin Peters of the ChiTown Crime Chasers told FOX 32 he saw “two to three hundred kids running back and forth, jumping on cars, fighting, and taunting police.” His crew helped a boy who had been beaten unconscious and called for medical help.

Ald. Brian Hopkins of the 2nd Ward called the situation “out of control” on X, saying a curfew enforcement order went out around 10 p.m. — and the crowd thinned within 40 minutes.

Chicago police reported eight juvenile arrests and 24 curfew violations. Seven teens, ages 13 to 16, were each charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct; one 15-year-old also had an outstanding warrant. A 16-year-old faces three felony counts of aggravated assault of a peace officer.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office for comment.

Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily as the curfew debate comes back to City Hall.

Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.