Castañon Nava Settlement: ICE Warrantless Arrests and Vehicle Stops

The Castañon Nava settlement is a federal consent decree, approved in February 2022, that limits how Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out warrantless arrests and vehicle stops across six Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas. It requires ICE officers to document a specific legal basis for every warrantless arrest, bars pretextual traffic stops, and entitles people arrested in violation of its rules to release from custody without bond. The decree remains in effect in 2026, and federal courts have repeatedly ordered ICE to release detainees and change its policies to comply with it.¹

What ICE Must Do Under the Settlement

The agreement centers on documentation. For every warrantless arrest, ICE officers must record in the detainee’s I-213 form that the arrest was warrantless, the exact location, the person’s community ties (family, home, employment), and particularized facts explaining why the person was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained. Officers must also document that they identified themselves as ICE agents and stated the reason for the arrest.²

One provision does a lot of the work. The agreement specifies that a person’s mere presence in the United States without legal status is not, by itself, enough to conclude they are a flight risk.² Under federal immigration law, ICE agents can make warrantless arrests only when they have probable cause that a person is in the country unlawfully and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The Castañon Nava rule prevents the second requirement from collapsing into the first.

Vehicle Stops

The settlement directly addresses the pretextual traffic stops at the heart of the original lawsuit. ICE officers lack authority to enforce state or local traffic laws and are prohibited from telling a driver that a stop is traffic-related. An agent may pull over a vehicle only when there are “specific, articulable facts” supporting a reasonable suspicion that someone inside is in the country unlawfully, and those facts must be documented in the I-213 form after any resulting arrest.²

Training and Nationwide Policy

ICE was required to issue a nationwide Broadcast Statement of Policy reflecting these rules and to train officers in the Chicago region within 45 days of the effective date and all other officers within 180 days.¹ The Broadcast Statement itself is a nationwide document, though the enforcement remedies below apply only within the six-state region.

Who Is Covered

The class covers all current and future people arrested without a warrant for a civil immigration violation within the ICE Chicago Field Office’s area of responsibility. That area spans Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas.¹ Someone arrested outside those states is not a class member and cannot invoke the decree’s release remedy, though the National Immigrant Justice Center still encourages reports from anywhere in the country to support broader enforcement efforts.³

The decree’s scope has an important limit that emerged in later litigation. It covers only truly warrantless arrests. Arrests made pursuant to any warrant, including a defective one filled out in the field, technically fall outside the decree; those detainees can still challenge the warrant individually through habeas corpus but cannot rely on the settlement’s automatic release remedy.⁴

What Happens When ICE Violates the Decree

When a class member is arrested in a way that violates the agreement, they are entitled to release from ICE custody “as soon as practicable” without paying a bond or being placed under conditions of release. They may also receive a refund of any bond money already paid.³

Enforcement runs through a structured process. ICE must provide plaintiffs’ counsel with redacted copies of I-213 forms for warrantless arrests in northern Illinois every month, disputes over compliance follow a conflict-resolution procedure, and unresolved disputes can be brought to a magistrate judge on a motion to enforce.¹ Since enforcement began, plaintiffs have secured the release of 175 people and forced the government to return bond payments or lift release conditions for 168 others.⁵

The 2025 Enforcement Crisis

The decree took on new prominence after the change in presidential administrations in January 2025. On June 11, 2025, a senior Department of Homeland Security official sent an email unilaterally declaring that the department’s obligations under the consent decree were terminated and rescinding the Broadcast Statement of Policy the settlement had required.⁶ A July 8, 2025, internal memorandum from Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons announced that all people in the country without authorization were subject to mandatory detention, a position the Seventh Circuit later described as one that “upends decades of practice.”⁴

A large-scale ICE operation known as Operation Midway Blitz ran from roughly June through October 2025 across the Chicago area, including Woodridge, Palatine, Arlington Heights, Naperville, and Elgin.⁷ The government later identified 615 people arrested without warrants between June 11 and October 7, 2025.⁸ Plaintiffs also documented ICE’s practice of having agents carry blank I-200 warrant forms and fill them out at the scene after detaining someone. An ICE Academy training presentation entered into evidence stated that “Officers may also carry a blank form I-200 for the arrest of each collateral so that an individual flight risk analysis is not needed.”⁴

Key Court Rulings

October 2025: Decree Extended

On October 7, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings issued a 52-page ruling finding that ICE had failed to substantially comply with the consent decree. He extended the decree by 118 days, matching the time between the June 11 unilateral rescission and his order, pushing expiration to February 2, 2026. The ruling ordered ICE to re-broadcast the consent decree’s policy to all field offices nationwide, report all warrantless arrests monthly, and lift conditions of release for 11 people in the Chicago area who had been subject to warrantless arrests. Judge Cummings characterized the approximately 200 alleged violations identified by plaintiffs as potentially “the tip of the iceberg.”⁹

November 2025: Release Order

On November 13, 2025, Judge Cummings ordered the government to release 13 individuals whose arrests it conceded violated the consent decree. The same order directed the government to determine whether roughly 615 additional people arrested without warrants during Operation Midway Blitz should be released on bond or placed in alternatives to detention.¹⁰ The judge rejected the government’s argument that people arrested inside the country who had originally entered without inspection were subject to mandatory detention, finding that interpretation defied the “plain reading of the law.”¹¹

December 2025: Seventh Circuit Splits the Difference

On December 11, 2025, a Seventh Circuit panel denied the government’s request to stay the extension of the consent decree, finding that ICE’s substantial non-compliance justified keeping it in place. The court stayed the portion of the November order that would have released roughly 442 remaining potential class members, ruling that the district court likely exceeded its authority by ordering their release without individual determinations that each arrest violated the decree.⁴

February 2026: New Policy Struck Down

On February 13, 2026, Judge Cummings ruled that a new ICE warrantless arrest policy announced in January 2026 violated the consent decree and ordered DHS to recirculate the original Broadcast Statement of Policy to all ICE officers by February 18. The judge also ruled that anyone released under the decree must be released without conditions — no check-ins, no parole — and ordered DHS to certify the removal of such conditions by February 20. On February 17, the court ordered the release of four additional individuals held in violation of the decree, required 12 hours’ notice before any releases, and directed DHS to produce a master list of all foreign nationals arrested without warrants or subject to field warrants from June 22, 2025, onward.¹²

May 2026: Seventh Circuit Ruling on the Merits

On May 15, 2026, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the extension of the consent decree, finding the government’s substantial noncompliance, including the June 2025 unilateral rescission, justified the district court’s intervention. The court affirmed the release of class members whose individual arrests were verified as violations but reversed the release of potential class members who lacked individualized determinations and those arrested with field-issued I-200 warrants.⁵

On the mandatory detention question, the court rejected the government’s argument that people already living in the United States could be placed in mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), finding that provision applies to applicants for admission at the border, not to people arrested in the interior. One judge ruled the government’s position was substantively wrong, aligning with a recent Second Circuit decision. A concurring judge declined to reach the merits, finding the parties were bound by the shared understanding of mandatory detention when the consent decree was signed.⁵

Current Status and How to Report a Violation

As of mid-2026, the consent decree remains in full force. Although the district court had set a February 2, 2026, expiration date, the court ruled the decree will not expire while three pending motions to enforce remain unresolved. Once those motions are decided, a 30-day sunset period will follow for resolving remaining individual claims, and the court will retain limited jurisdiction to adjudicate violations that occurred while the decree was in effect.¹²

Potential violations can be reported to class counsel through a referral form maintained by the National Immigrant Justice Center or by emailing a completed screening form to litigation@immigrantjustice.org with the subject line “Warrantless Arrest.” NIJC accepts reports even from individuals outside the six-state region, though only class members inside Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, or Kansas can invoke the decree’s release remedy directly.³

1
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Castañon Nava Settlement Agreement
2
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Castañon Nava Settlement Agreement – Attachment A
3
National Immigrant Justice Center. Final Settlement Regarding ICE Warrantless Arrests and Vehicle Stops
4
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Castañon-Nava v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 25-3050
5
National Immigrant Justice Center. Seventh Circuit Court Affirms Extension of Castañon Nava Consent Decree
6
FindLaw. Castañon-Nava v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security
7
WBEZ. ICE Made Unlawful Arrests During Operation Midway Blitz, New Court Filing Says
8
ABC 7 Chicago. Judge Rules 4 Arrested by ICE Without Warrants During Operation Midway Blitz Should Be Released
9
Hanford Sentinel. Federal Judge in Chicago Finds ICE Repeatedly Violated Consent Decree Over Warrantless Arrests
10
Washington Post. DHS Judge Castañon Nava Release
11
ACLU of Illinois. Castanon Nava v. Department of Homeland Security
12
National Immigrant Justice Center. Castañon Nava Case Updates