Seventh Circuit Affirms Extension of Castañon Nava Consent Decree Holding ICE Accountable for Unlawful Warrantless Arrests

CHICAGO — The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a decision affirming an October 2025 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Cummings which extended the Castañon Nava Consent Decree and ordered the release of individuals unlawfully arrested without warrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol officers.

The consent decree has been in effect since 2022 as a result of a class action lawsuit filed by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, Inc. (ACLU of Illinois) on behalf of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), Organized Communities Against Deportations, and individual plaintiffs who had been racially profiled and arrested without warrants and without probable cause during the first Trump administration.

Attorneys in the case provided the following statements in response to the Seventh Circuit’s decision:

NIJC Director of Litigation Keren Zwick:

“Today’s ruling essentially keeps us on the path we have been on since the appeals court allowed key parts of the district court’s ruling to stand last November. Since then, we have worked with community partners and families of hundreds of people who have been arrested without warrants and detained by immigration, painstakingly reviewing individual arrest reports to identify violations of the consent decree, negotiating with the government to secure relief for people who were unlawfully arrested, and returning to the district court when the administration refused to budge. Through this process we have secured release for 175 people and forced the government to return bond payments or lift conditions of release for 168 others. Unfortunately, due to the government’s intransigence, many more people who likely were arrested in violation of the decree have been swiftly deported without due process, or have given up and chosen to leave the United States to escape prolonged detention in inhumane conditions. We intend to continue reviewing documents and conferring with the government with the goal of giving as many people as possible the opportunity to return to their homes and families in the United States.”

ACLU of Illinois Deputy Legal Director Michelle García:

“This win belongs to our clients and the communities who have bravely reported ICE and Customs and Border Protection’s illegal warrantless arrests, including during Operation Midway Blitz. It affirms that the federal government must follow the Constitution and federal law during immigration enforcement, and that courts can hold the government accountable when they do not. This ruling allows us to continue to ask for relief for individuals who should never have been detained and arrested in the first place. We will continue to advocate on behalf of every client for whom we can seek release.”

ICIRR senior policy counsel Fred Tsao:

“This victory shows what can happen when lawyers and community members work together to document Homeland Security abuses and pursue relief for those who are harmed and accountability for those who create the harm. We hope that this ruling will enable even more people who have been wrongly arrested by immigration agents to win release and return to their families and communities.”

The Seventh Circuit decision included additional substantive findings:

• The Court pointed to DHS’s systemic violations of the consent decree — including a ‘unilateral proclamation by a DHS senior official’ instructing officers to stop complying with the decree in June 2025 — to affirm the district court’s decision to extend the decree. The appeals court affirmed that the extension of the decree was “reasonable and narrowly tailored to address Defendants’ noncompliance.”
• A central question of the case was whether courts had authority to issue class-wide relief to people who were arrested without a warrant in violation of the law. The court firmly concluded that such class-wide relief was proper, both because 8 U.S.C. 1252(f)(1), the provision of law that the Department of Homeland Security relied on to oppose such relief, was inapplicable to warrantless arrests, and because the government had waived its right to argue for its application by entering into a consent decree.
• The court also addressed the fact that, last year, DHS began arguing that people who were present in the United States after entering without being inspected were subject to “mandatory” detention. The majority rejected this approach, albeit for different reasons. One judge concluded that this position was substantively wrong and sided with a recent decision from the Second Circuit rejecting DHS’s view. Another judge concluded that it was not necessary to reach the merits of this question because the issue arose in this case in the context of a consent decree and both parties were bound by their shared understanding of mandatory detention at the time the decree was signed.

Read the Seventh Circuit decision