State claims federal agents used military-style tactics in attempt to coerce Illinois into changing its immigration policies
Article Summary
- Illinois filed a 103-page lawsuit that seeks to severely limit federal immigration agents’ authority to execute the types of aggressive raids that began in Chicago last September.
- The state and city of Chicago asked a court to prevent the feds from using “roving patrol” tactics used by immigration agents, as well as face scans and crowd control tactics such as tear gas.
- State and city leaders say the feds have used such aggressive tactics to try to coerce them into changing their immigration policies.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD (Capitol News Illinois) — 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.
Read more: 7th Circuit stays judge’s order restricting immigration agents’ use of riot control weapons | Judge hesitant to grant dismissal of lawsuit over immigration agents’ use-of-force tactics in Chicago
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.
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.
By BRENDEN MOORE
Capitol News Illinois
bmoore@capitolnewsillinois.com
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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