ICE Still Targeting Chicago Immigrants at Courthouses

Federal immigration agents arrested a Venezuelan immigrant outside a South Side courthouse on April 15, raising fresh alarms about enforcement tactics that Illinois officials say violate state law.

Dario Quevedo Marquez had gone to the Branch 35 and 38 courthouse at 727 E. 111th St. for a hearing on a misdemeanor battery charge. As he left the building, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him into custody. His wife, Daymelis Martinez, said she tried to ask the agents in Spanish why they were taking her husband.

An agent told her to stay quiet or she’d be arrested, too.

Martinez said she couldn’t risk it. Their three children, ages 15, 12 and 11, are still working through their asylum proceedings, and she’s the one holding things together for them here.

“They’d be alone. We don’t have anyone here,” Martinez said.

The arrest is part of a pattern that community organizers and Cook County officials say has grown more visible in recent weeks, even as the high-profile sweeps of Operation Midway Blitz have wound down. While enforcement activity appeared to slow in the early months of 2026, advocates say it never stopped. It just got quieter.

Evelyn Vargas, leadership and development organizer for Organized Communities Against Deportations, said suburban Cicero has returned to seeing daily reports of immigrants being arrested. Similar reports are coming from other parts of the city and surrounding suburbs, with federal agents spotted near courthouses and in neighborhoods across the Chicago area.

The courthouse arrests are the most legally contested part of what’s happening. Illinois passed the Court Access, Safety, and Participation Act in December, which bans civil immigration arrests at state courthouses without a warrant. A Cook County judge also issued an order barring such arrests. The Trump administration sued Illinois over the law in December, and that case is still pending in federal court.

The law hasn’t stopped the arrests. Since the start of April, immigration agents have entered Cook County courthouses or used courthouse property to attempt arrests at least seven times, taking at least three people, according to reporting by Block Club Chicago.

Matthew Hendrickson, spokesperson for the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, put it plainly.

“Our courts cannot properly administer justice if people are afraid to attend hearings, as they are required to do by law, because they risk abduction by federal agents on unrelated civil matters,” Hendrickson said in an emailed statement.

The Department of Homeland Security pushed back in its own statement, arguing that the Constitution doesn’t prohibit arresting someone who broke the law “where you find them.” The agency’s statement reads: “The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense.”

That framing glosses over what Illinois officials have emphasized all along. The state law doesn’t argue that courts are sanctuaries for people accused of serious crimes. It argues that civil immigration enforcement at courthouses chills the ability of anyone, regardless of status, to participate in legal proceedings. Witnesses don’t show up. Victims don’t testify. People skip required hearings because they’re afraid of being grabbed on the way out. The National Immigrant Justice Center has documented similar courthouse enforcement patterns in other states, noting that when immigrants avoid courts, criminal cases collapse and communities become less safe overall.

That calculation is playing out in real time at places like the branch courthouse on 111th Street, which serves some of the South Side’s most densely immigrant communities.

Quevedo Marquez’s case is a sharp example of the stakes. He wasn’t fleeing a hearing. He attended one. He did what the legal system asked of him, and he was arrested for it. Whether the agents had a valid judicial warrant, as required under the state law, hasn’t been publicly confirmed. His wife and children are left waiting, uncertain about what comes next for their family and for their asylum case.

The conflict between Illinois’s court-access law and federal enforcement policy is headed toward a resolution in federal court, but that process moves slowly. In the meantime, organizers with groups like Organized Communities Against Deportations are urging immigrants to travel with trusted contacts when they have court dates and to document any encounters with agents near courthouse property.

For many Chicago families, the practical reality is that showing up to court has become a risk calculation most people never expected to face when they came here seeking legal protection.