State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid said his office is investigating whether state laws were broken after a person was detained by ICE agents Wednesday at the Bridgeview Courthouse, according to a statement from his office.
Last year, then-Cook County Circuit Chief Judge Timothy Evans signed an order barring the civil arrest in and around county courthouses, though judicial warrants can still be carried out. It’s backed by a state law signed in December banning federal agents from conducting civil arrests at state courthouses and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle also signed an executive order prohibiting feds from staging on county property as Chicago and others did the same.
On Wednesday, the Cook County sheriff’s office said a man ran into the courthouse and through security and was stopped by court deputies before ICE agents entered the courthouse and handcuffed the man. Two people attempted to film what was happening near the security checkpoint but were stopped by deputies, the sheriff’s office said.
The ICE agents took the man to a car outside and “told a responding Court lieutenant that they had a valid arrest warrant,” but did not present one, the sheriff’s office said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and information about the alleged warrant.
Earlier in the day, agents had detained a woman and a small child as they went to enter the courthouse, according to the Cook County Public Defender’s office, which said the arrests were “clear violations of state law.” They also said they have not been able to find federal criminal charges for the man who was arrested later, and that the man had been at court for a hearing to be offered a deferred prosecution.
They said per video released of the arrest, “it does not appear the sheriff’s office asked to see the warrant.”
“The conduct displayed by the federal agents was illegal and deeply concerning,” the office said in a statement. “As the video clearly shows, ICE was permitted to arrest someone inside of the lobby of the courthouse despite offering no evidence of compliance with state law and court order. … Arrests like this, which routinely have been of people accused of low-level offenses that in many cases are later dismissed, prevent access to justice and damage public confidence in our legal system.”
Rashid said his office would “expend all resources at our discretion to get to the bottom of what happened today.” The actions of the deputies who stopped the members of the public from filming are currently under review by the sheriff’s Office of Professional Review.
A rash of ICE arrests at the Domestic Violence Courthouse at 555 W. Harrison St. downtown Chicago earlier this year were similarly decried by the Cook County Public Defender’s office, state legislators and community activists.
Holding ICE agents accountable for alleged violations of state and local laws has proven difficult in Illinois, with officials pointing fingers at each other. Meanwhile prosecutors in states like Minnesota have leveled charges against feds who took similar actions as others have in Illinois, such as shooting people or pointing guns at them.
Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network, which is part of a rapid responder network in the southwest suburbs that was at the scene Wednesday, said he still believes the push for a special prosecutor to go after federal agents — as opposed to Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who has been criticized for her lack of action — was still the best bet at accountability. That effort was struck down by a judge in April.
“I don’t have any confidence that anyone else is gonna get involved here, the feds aren’t gonna investigate themselves,” he said. “It can only be stopped by people in the community resisting the way we are, so we have to keep it up.”
The detainment comes hours after Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) demanded accountability from Chicago police in a Chicago Tribune op-ed about the Sun-Times reporting on CPD closing an investigation into ICE agents just days after they hit a woman’s vehicle before tasing and detaining a man in Albany Park earlier this month.
CPD didn’t submit an incident report for the crash — a requirement when an outside law enforcement agency is involved, per the mayor’s “ICE on Notice” executive order — raising “concerns that [CPD] has not fully operationalized” it, Vasquez said.
The fact that the Cook County state attorney’s office has argued that prosecutors cannot act unless a police agency conducts an investigation and refers a case for review makes “makes CPD’s handling of this matter even more troubling.”
“If a potential law enforcement accountability incident involving federal agents is quickly narrowed into a traffic report, labeled ‘non-criminal’ and suspended within days, then prosecutors may never receive the kind of case file needed to determine whether charges are warranted,” Vasquez wrote.