ICE Arrested And Detained A US Citizen For Hours Because He Looked Mexican

Legal Issues

from the try-looking-whiter,-citizen dept

Trump — just like the last time he was in office — is still pretending his bigoted anti-immigrant policies are only in place to ensure the US can rid itself of dangerous foreign criminals. But no one really believed that last time. And with his return to the Oval Office, any pretense of fairness or concern for constitutional rights has vanished completely.

What we’re getting is exactly what Trump and his supporters want: the vanishing/banishment of anyone who isn’t a straight white male. So, we get what we’re seeing here: the unlawful arrest and detainment of a legal US resident just because ICE knows that, under this regime, it will never really be held accountable for its actions.

Here’s the disturbing latest , reported by Adrian Cardona-Maguigad for WBEZ-Chicago:

The 22 cases include Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen who, according to court documents, was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Broadview. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID.

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

That’s sickening, especially since this all could have been cleared up prior to the arrest and the subsequent several hours of detainment if ICE officers had bothered to check the ID and social security card officers seized from Noriega’s person while they had Julio Noreiga’s actual person. Instead, the officers apparently felt Noriega needed to be subjected to the worst parts of the “justice” system, putting his rights on the back burner until they felt like getting around to verifying the only facts relevant to this arrest.

You’ll notice the opening paragraph refers to 22 cases. That’s because ICE has managed to reawaken mostly dormant legal proceedings brought against it by Immigrant Justice with it cavalier approach to immigration enforcement and the civil rights immigrants and US citizens are entitled to.

ICE had already agreed to knock off this shit more than a half-decade ago, shortly after Trump took office for the first time and initiated his first war on immigrants.

Attorneys say these actions violate the Nava Settlement — a 2018 class-action lawsuit filed in response to unlawful arrests by ICE agents who used traffic stops and other tactics to make arrests without a warrant.

Noriega is one of the 22 people listed in the Immigrant Justice filing [PDF]. Multiple others have been arrested and detained without legal basis in recent weeks. Some have been arrested despite ICE officers making it clear they were actually searching for someone else. In many of the cases listed, administrative arrest warrants are being written after arrests have already taken place, using backdated forms that contain pre-written signatures that don’t match the names of the arresting officers. In other cases, crucial information that would pertain to the arrest supposedly justified by the post-facto warrant is missing completely, including the justification for arrest (rather than a simple summons), which is supposed to contain facts that indicate the immigrant being arrested poses a flight risk.

Here’s how that went for Noriega, who is a legitimate US citizen who definitely can’t be arrested without a real warrant (and not the administrative warrants ICE uses). This is from the Immigrant Justice filing asking the court to enforce the stipulations of the settlement it obtained from ICE back in 2018.

Julio Noriega is 54 years old, was born in Chicago, and is a U.S. citizen. On January 31, 2025, he was walking near the corner of Cermak Road and Harlem Avenue in Berwyn, Illinois, handing out his resume to local businesses. As he walked out of a Jiffy Lube, he was approached by ICE officers who grabbed and handcuffed him and put him into a van, without an opportunity to explain his citizenship. The officers drove Julio and others around for more than an hour before bringing him to an ICE processing center, where he remained, still handcuffed, for several more hours. All the while, Julio had a wallet containing identification that ICE had confiscated. The officers never showed Julio a warrant, and they did not ask him any questions to ascertain whether he was a noncitizen or a flight risk. After about 10 hours, ICE officers reviewed the contents of Julio’s wallet, realized he was a U.S. citizen, and released him with no money and no paperwork.

ICE has refused to comment on its warrantless arrest and detainment of an American citizen, citing the “ongoing litigation.” But I’m sure those heading ICE and the DHS are fine with what’s happened here. Some collateral damage is expected when the government engages in bigotry-as-a-service. That it happened to someone with a Latin surname makes it so much easier for ICE, DHS, and Trump’s death cult to swallow. That Noriega has more right to remain in this country than, say, Elon Musk, ultimately doesn’t matter. ICE isn’t looking for dangerous foreign criminals. All it’s looking for is certain skin tones.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dhs, ice, immigration, julio noriega, racism, unlawful arrest
Companies: immigrant justice