Yolanda Orozco buried her face in her hands after making a public plea that federal immigration officials release her husband from custody weeks after he was arrested as he was arriving at his Lyons home after buying tamales for his family.
“We could end up living on the street,” Orozco said in Spanish, explaining how her husband, Abel Orozco Ortega, was the main breadwinner. The 47-year-old has remained in ICE custody since Jan. 26.
Orozco, speaking publicly about her husband for the first time, said his arrest came just as she was diagnosed with breast cancer and her pregnant daughter was hospitalized soon after.
“All that I ask is for my husband’s release,” Orozco said in Spanish. “Is it a crime to work? Because he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t have vices, he doesn’t do drugs. All he does is go to work. Is that what it means to be a criminal — to wake up early and go to work and look after your family?”
Her husband was one of 22 people — including a U.S. citizen — detained in the Chicago area in recent weeks by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since President Donald Trump started his second term. Attorneys from the National Immigrant Justice Center and ACLU of Illinois say the arrests are in violation of a 2022 federal court settlement that required ICE to adopt a nationwide policy on the arrests of people without warrants.
As part of the settlement, ICE is not allowed to make warrantless arrests in the Chicago area unless officials believe that the person is in the country unlawfully and have reason to believe that the person would flee before a warrant is secured, said Rebecca Glenberg, the chief supervising litigation counsel of First Amendment for the ACLU of Illinois.
The attorneys recently filed a motion in U.S. District Court asking for the settlement to be enforced and, among other things, are seeking the release of two immigrants who remain in custody — including Abel Orozco Ortega. They also want the government to return bond payments for those already released from custody and they want the ICE Chicago field office to issue a weekly report of everyone they’ve detained. The attorneys have been working with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Organized Communities Against Deportations that operate a hot line, (855) 435-7693, that has been tracking ICE arrests around Chicago.
The federal government is expected to respond to the motion by April 3, and a federal judge in Chicago will likely make a decision or call for a hearing later in April, attorneys said.
In an email, ICE said Monday that it does not comments on litigation proceedings. The federal agency has not publicly detailed how many people it has detained since Trump took office.
The motion outlines the detainment of 54-year-old Julio Noriega, a U.S. citizen, who was detained by ICE agents Jan. 31, as he was walking near Cermak Road and Harlem Avenue in Berwyn while he was handing out his resume to businesses.
Noriega was handcuffed and placed in a van then taken to an ICE processing center where he remained for at least 10 hours before agents realized he was a U.S. citizen, said Mark Fleming, the associate director of litigation for NIJC. He was released after midnight without any way to return home and without documentation of what happened, Fleming said.
“What his case represents here is they have no record of holding him,” Fleming said. “They have no record of having him, there’s no video camera, there’s no body camera. How do they not have any record of having him? That’s scary.”
Noriega told attorneys that he was released with a group of other individuals, leading to questions about whether others with legal status have been detained by ICE in the Chicago area.
The motion also outlines the case of two brothers, Jhony Ariel Godoy Gregorio and Marco Tulio Godoy Gregorio, who were detained by ICE around 5:30 a.m. Jan. 27, just as they were driving to work. Their other brother, who at the time was wearing an ICE ankle monitor, appeared to be the target of the arrest and he, too, was arrested, Fleming said.
Federal officers did not show Jhony Ariel Godoy Gregorio and Marco Tulio Godoy Gregorio a warrant for their arrests. Both brothers were taken to a facility in Indiana and later transferred to Louisiana before they were released on bond, according to the motion. Across the country, other families have reported that ICE has caused confusion in how they’ve moved around immigrants from various facilities.
Attorneys say that in all 22 cases, ICE did not have the warrant necessary to make the arrests. In at least two cases, federal agents forced their way into homes in Elgin and Chicago, where they arrested immigrants who were not the intended target of the arrest.
“They had people handcuffed, sometimes shackled, they had them pinned in their car while they rushed out to try and get an administrative warrant and then claim 30 minutes later that, aha, we have an administrative warrant and we don’t have to follow the settlement,” Fleming said. “That’s not how the law works.”
Back in Lyons, Eduardo Orozco said his family was forced to close the landscape business the elder Orozco had been operating and now worry about also losing their home.
“He is a working man, he is loving, he is caring, he’s responsible,” Eduardo Orozco said about his father. “He is somebody to look up to, and he is an honest man. And he shouldn’t have been arrested. I just want to ask for the government to please look into who he is so they can do what’s right.”