Family says suburban Chicago man was arrested by ICE on hastily produced warrant despite no criminal record
A new federal lawsuit has revealed new details of 22 people taken into custody by the Chicago office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The suit claims the arrests, all made in the first weeks of the Trump administration, were unlawful. One of the families impacted spoke out Monday.
ICE came to a family's house in southwest suburban Lyons on Jan. 26 with a warrant looking for the son of the family. Instead, they arrested, detained and jailed the dad — who had the same name.
Abel Orozco Ortega was coming home with tamales for his family when he was arrested by ICE agents that day. Seven weeks later, Ortega remains in custody.
This lawsuit just filed in U.S. District Court includes the Ortega story and 21 others like it, claiming unlawful arrest practices under the new trump administration.
"All that I ask is for my husband's release," Ortega's wife, Yolanda Orozco, sad through an interpreter. "He is not a criminal."
Ortega is a local business owner who has been in the U.S. since the late 1990s.
"He has never been arrested in his entire life," said Ortega's son, Eduardo Orozco. "He has no criminal record, no misdemeanors, no felonies, no drug use, no DUIs."
What happened that morning exactly?
Lawyers for the National Immigrant Justice Center say after agents realized the man detained in the back seat was much older than the man they came looking for, they quickly produced a fresh warrant for the dad.
"As they had him handcuffed, tried to figure out who he was, and then assess that they believe that he was in the country unlawfully," said Mark Fleming, an attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
After being taken into custody, Ortega had a medical episode. He was taken to a hospital, and then taken to a holding facility at the Clay County Jail near Terre Haute, Indiana — where he has remained ever since.
CBS News Chicago wanted to know Ortega's citizenship status.
"He currently does not have a lawful status in the U.S., though he would be eligible for a green card," said Fleming.
When Ortega returned to the U.S after visiting his dying father in Mexico in 2003, he was named in a removal order that was left unaddressed.
That, his attorneys said, was enough to trigger the hastily-produced January warrant.
"They're arresting people who they're not supposed to," said Eduardo Orozco. "They're stating that they're arresting thousands and thousands of hardcore criminals. My father is not a criminal."
But Ortega remains jailed with an uncertain future — one likely to hinge on how a federal judge in Chicago views the Trump administration's sliding threshold for deportation.
The first hearing is slated for April 3.
