Federal Judge Orders Hundreds of ICE Detainees to Be Released

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of hundreds of immigrants detained in Chicago, amid the Trump administration’s reckless “Operation Midway Blitz.”

U.S District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said the government may have violated a consent decree against “warrantless arrests” because most of those who were arrested didn’t have a criminal record or deportation order. Cummings ordered those who do not pose a significant risk or have mandatory detention orders to be granted bond by November 21.

Cummings is giving the Department of Justice one week to produce a list of all immigrants that fall in that category out of the 615 arrested by federal agents. If the detainees don’t have a deportation order or criminal record, Cummings said he would release them on a $1,500 bond. He has also prohibited the government from trying to convince them to sign voluntary removal documents in the meantime.

Most were processed in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb, but others have been sent to detention centers across the country. A DOJ attorney, William Weiland, said that at least 12 of the detainees were a security risk, and asked the government to stay any releases to vet all of them. Cummings said that the government could have that time, ordering that government attorneys and the detainees’ counsel turn in a status report on November 21.

Still, Cummings’s decision is another rebuke to the Trump administration’s immigration efforts in the Chicago metro area, which have included conducting violent raids in the city’s neighborhoods, as well as using weapons such as tear gas against protesters.

If many of the immigrants detained by federal agents are eventually released, it will show that the Trump administration’s tactics were not just excessive but illegal. If that is the case, will any officials, whether they are low-level law enforcement or members of the administration, face any consequences?

Donald Trump is beginning to squirm under pressure as Congress pushes to release the Epstein files.

Trump ranted on Truth Social Wednesday about the bipartisan bid to make the case files public, claiming that the entire effort was a “hoax” to deflect from the government shutdown.

“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” Trump posted. “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk—and they should pay a fair price.

“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” he continued.

In a separate post, Trump reiterated that he believed Democrats were “using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one—THE SHUTDOWN!”

Congress is potentially hours away from voting on a discharge petition that would force a vote regarding the files’ release.

For months, just four Republicans had penned their signatures on the discharge petition. But in early November, concern swelled among GOP lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported.

Apparently trying to unravel conservative support for the files’ release, Trump phoned his MAGA acolytes Tuesday in an unsuccessful attempt to get them to remove their signatures from the petition.

Files released by House Democrats early Wednesday shed even more light on the Trump-Epstein connection, illustrating that as late as 2011 Epstein was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of the financier’s residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote to his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at the time.

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The Trump administration is using the government shutdown as an excuse to avoid releasing the official jobs and inflation data for the second month in a row.

“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October [consumer price index] and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at a Wednesday press conference.

While the White House has previously hinted that the inflation report won’t be released due to the shutdown, there is less explanation for why the jobs report can’t be released.

The reality is that the economy is bad and Trump can’t hide the data—or blame it on Joe Biden—forever.

Private-sector data from payroll company ADP showed that the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs in September. In October, an estimated 11,000 jobs were lost per week. “The labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson.

Trump is planting the seeds to question any future jobs reports that do eventually come out because they will likely be abysmal. He already fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August when the agency reported that the economy created 258,000 fewer jobs in May and June than initially thought. Now, he’s insisting that a government shutdown (which most people blame him for) will permanently delete two months of jobs data because the numbers won’t be anywhere near where he wants them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats and “an unhinged judge” Wednesday while making excuses for President Donald Trump’s concerted efforts to get out of paying SNAP benefits.

During a press briefing, one reporter asked Leavitt to make sense of her claim that the Democrats were to blame for SNAP recipients missing their benefits in November. The Trump administration has taken multiple steps to block a judge’s order that would require the government to disburse the full funding.

“So recipients missed their SNAP benefits because the Democrats shut the government down, and they forced the administration to tap into a contingency fund that did not even fund the full entirety of this program,” Leavitt said. “So then you had an unhinged judge who was trying to dictate from the bench what the executive branch has to pay for and where that money has to come from. That is judicial overreach at its finest, and so that’s why the administration pushed back on that.

“We can’t have the judicial branch telling the executive branch that we need to rob the children nutrition fund, which is what this judge was trying to do, to pay for SNAP benefits. That’s completely inappropriate and it’s unconstitutional,” Leavitt said. “And we’ve been proven right with that argument.”

This certainly isn’t the first time Leavitt has railed against a federal judge who ruled against Trump. And in reality, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to avoid funding SNAP benefits.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration started pushing the unprecedented claim that it couldn’t legally use the Department of Agriculture’s contingency funds to pay for SNAP benefits during a shutdown. The agency has claimed the fund only contains around $4.65 billion, or about half of what is required for November benefits, and the government has maintained that taking from it would siphon funds from other child nutrition programs. Meanwhile, Trump has managed to move money around to fund the military’s $5.3 billion payroll.

When federal judges ordered Trump to use the funds to pay at least some of the benefits, the president said it would be his “honor” to do so but later claimed that no one would see a penny until the government shutdown ended. His open expression of his “intent to defy” the judge’s order prompted District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. to demand that Trump pay SNAP benefits in full.

Earlier this week, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to step in to block McConnell’s order. On Tuesday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signed an order extending her temporary stay on McConnell’s request, as the Senate has approved a measure that would resume appropriations and reopen the government.

Donald Trump is pleading with Republicans not to release the Epstein files.

The president called at least two of his congressional allies on Tuesday in an effort to get them to remove their names from a discharge petition that will force a vote on releasing details of the investigation into the pedophilic sex trafficker and his associates.

That included a “very early wakeup call” to Representative Lauren Boebert, and phone tag with Representative Nancy Mace, The New York Times’s Annie Karni reported Wednesday.

Trump has since met with Boebert, a White House official confirmed to CNN, though the meeting did not successfully sway her. Instead, the Colorado lawmaker “remains committed to keeping her name on the discharge petition,” according to Karni.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt failed Wednesday to address why Trump had probed MAGA acolytes on the vote, claiming instead that the president was displaying an incredible case of “transparency” by “briefing members of Congress whenever they please.”

“That’s a defining factor of transparency, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues,” Leavitt said.

For months, Boebert and Mace were two of just four Republicans that had penned their signatures on the discharge petition. They were joined by Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But earlier this month, concern swelled among Republican lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported.

Files released by House Democrats early Wednesday shed even more light on the Trump-Epstein connection, illustrating as late as 2011 that Epstein was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of his residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote to his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at the time.

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won the special election in Arizona 50 days ago, has also vowed to sign the bipartisan petition, making her the last signature that the House needs to force a vote on the issue. Grijalva is scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday, teeing up a vote on the Epstein files in the coming days.