A federal judge on Friday ruled that a Mexican national whose arrest by immigration agents in Niles last weekend disrupted his 16-year-old daughter’s cancer treatment has been detained unlawfully and deserves a bond hearing.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel ordered that Ruben Torres Maldonado should get that hearing by Friday, giving his lawyers a chance to argue for his freedom.
However, Daniel did not order Maldonado’s immediate release.
“While sympathetic to the plight [Maldonado’s] daughter faces due to her health concerns, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant statutes, rules, and precedents,” Daniel wrote in a three-page order.
Maldonado, 40, entered the United States in 2003 and has been living in Chicago with his partner of 20 years, according to his lawyers. He’s worked as a painter and has had the same employer for the last two decades.
Maldonado and his partner have two U.S. citizen children — a 4-year-old and a 16-year-old daughter.
Doctors diagnosed the couple’s daughter, Ofelia Giselle Torres Hidalgo, with metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma in December 2024, according to Maldonado’s lawyers. They say she’s received chemotherapy and radiation therapy at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
They also say she’s a “straight ‘A’ student” at Lake View High School.
Sandibell Hidalgo (left) and Ofelia Torres, 16, speak during a press conference Wednesday. Since her father’s arrest last weekend, she’’s been unable to continue treatment for cancer “because of the stress and disruption” caused by the arrest, according to Ruben Torres Maldonado’s lawyers.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
She’d been released from Lurie on Oct. 17, the day before her father’s arrest. But attorneys told Daniel during a hearing Thursday that she’d been released so she could see family and friends. Since her father’s arrest, they said, she’d been unable to continue treatment “because of the stress and disruption” caused by the arrest.
A doctor also wrote in a letter given to the judge that “Ofelia’s ongoing complex medical care requires the support of her parents in a very difficult time.”
Justice Department attorney Craig Oswald told the judge that immigration authorities were unwilling to release Maldonado voluntarily because “he had not cooperated” during his arrest and allegedly put agents “in harm’s way.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Maldonado “did not comply with instructions from the officers and attempted to flee in his vehicle and backed into a government vehicle.”
“This is nothing more than a desperate Hail Mary attempt to keep a criminal illegal alien in our country,” she added.
Maldonado’s attorneys told the judge he’d been denied a bond hearing based on an “erroneous assertion that he is subject to mandatory detention.” They pointed to the Trump administration’s attempt this summer to expand the use of an immigration law that governs the “removal of inadmissible arriving aliens.”
Federal judges in Chicago have recently joined others from around the country in rejecting the Trump administration’s interpretation of that law. Maldonado’s lawyers say that law is limited to “noncitizens who recently arrived at a border or port of entry.”
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, in a separate case involving a settlement that governs immigration arrests around Chicago, suggested Friday he is considering taking action to help facilitate the release of people subjected to mandatory detention under the Trump administration’s reading of the law.
Daniel joined the chorus in his Friday order, rejecting the government’s argument.
“There is no dispute here that [Maldonado], a noncitizen, was ‘already in the country,’ ” Daniel wrote. “He has been here for more than two decades.”
The judge added, “there is an individual in custody who is not subject to mandatory detention, who wants a bond hearing, and who has been denied a bond hearing.
“Due process requires a bond hearing.”
Contributing: Michael Puente