Republican President Donald Trump’s nationwide crackdown on immigration has begun following a flurry of executive orders and policies created by the administration, including reversing a previous rule that prevented ICE agents from entering “sensitive places” such as schools, hospitals and churches. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it and its partner federal agencies “began conducting enhanced targeted operations” Sunday. They have continued into the week.
According to statistics provided by ICE on the social platform X, on Monday, Jan. 27, the federal agency had 1,179 arrests and 853 detainers lodged, or a request from ICE that asks a federal, state or local law enforcement agency — including jails, prisons or other confinement facilities — to hold an immigrant 48 hours beyond the time they would ordinarily release them so the Department of Homeland Security has time to assume custody.
As arrests and detentions ramp up both locally and nationally, immigrant advocates and faith leaders are expanding their efforts to provide services to people who have already been detained or are vulnerable to arrests. On Monday, one church in Evanston said it would open its doors to immigrants who are seeking sanctuary from deportation.
“We stand in solidarity with those fearing deportation, and we are willing to use all of our privilege and our resources to protect them,” the Rev. Michael Woolf, senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston, said.
The Tribune spoke with Nicole Hallett, a clinical law professor at the University of Chicago, and Diana Rashid, a managing attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center, to learn more about what happens after someone is arrested by ICE in Illinois.
What happens after someone is arrested by ICE
The first step after making an arrest is to take the arrested person to a processing center where they are interviewed by an ICE agent, fingerprinted and sometimes given the chance to call a loved one. That processing center is usually in the western suburb of Broadview, where detainees are kept for a few hours before they are either released or detained, according to Rashid.
At the processing center, ICE will then decide if it is going to initiate removal proceedings for an individual. If ICE decides to move forward with removal proceedings, it will issue something called a notice to appear, which is a document given to an arrestee that initiates civil immigration proceedings. At the same time, officials will also determine if an arrestee will be detained or released throughout the removal process.
Since Illinois does not have any detention centers due to the Way Forward Act, a state law enacted in 2021 that prohibits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal deportation authorities, detainees are transported to a detention center in a neighboring state, Rashid explained. That typically includes Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin, Clay County Jail in Indiana and Boone County Jail in Kentucky.
How long someone can be detained for varies, according to immigration lawyers the Tribune spoke with. If an individual has certain criminal convictions or poses a security risk, they can be subject to mandatory detention by the government. Criminal convictions that could lead to mandatory detention could range from relatively minor criminal offenses to violent crime. The recent passage of the Laken Riley Act will also now allow the government to detain people for smaller offenses like drug and theft convictions.
Nearly everyone else is up to the discretion of ICE on whether or not they should be detained, Hallett said. Deciding factors that go into that process include whether ICE believes a person is a flight risk, poses a danger to their community or even whether an ICE facility has enough beds to hold someone.
“In many cases, ICE is sort of forced into releasing people because there simply aren’t beds available to detain them,” Hallett said.
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If ICE determines someone can be detained, then that individual has the right to go to immigration court and ask for a bond hearing, Hallett said. Those bonds can range from anywhere between $1,500 to more than $25,000, Hallett said. However, if a person gets denied a bond, a bond hearing or cannot pay their bond, they must wait in the detention facility until their court proceedings are over.
“It can be indefinitely,” Rashid said, referring to how long individuals can stay in detention. Rashid also noted it could be likely that more “noncitizens will be swept up into mandatory custody and not have a right to a bond and will remain detained for as long as it takes for them to resolve their immigration case.”
Under a new executive order signed by Trump, noncitizens who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than two years can be subject to expedited removal, which would also prevent that group of people from having a bond hearing, Rashid said, a new rule that Rashid said she and her team were closely monitoring.
While everyone has the right to an attorney when going through removal proceedings, noncitizens do not have the right to an appointed attorney, meaning that the government does not have to provide them with a lawyer, forcing noncitizens to find their own lawyer.
As a result, Hallett said some people end up using pro bono lawyers from nonprofits or hire private attorneys, although most noncitizens who are in removal proceedings cannot afford a private attorney or can only afford to pay very little.
“They may not get an attorney who’s able to devote the kind of time that’s required to actually succeed in an immigration case,” Hallett said. “If they can’t find an attorney that’s working pro bono or that is retained privately, then they will have to go through those proceedings without an attorney.”
The number of people who go through immigration court with legal representation has increased significantly in the past 10 years, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. In 2014, there were over 145,000 immigration cases with legal representation, whereas 2024 saw over a million cases with legal representation. But at the same time, the Vera Institute of Justice noted that the number of people in immigration court has increased much more compared with the number of people with legal representation, “causing a drop in the rate of representation even while the number of people with representation in immigration court is at an all-time high.”
Immigrants who go through the legal process with an attorney are more likely to be released from detention and are also more likely to win their removal cases, a 2016 study by the American Immigration Council found.
Hallett noted that even though ICE can detain someone until the conclusion of their removal proceedings, there are lower courts in some states that have ruled that there are constitutional limits to how long ICE can hold someone in detention. Those constitutional limits, however, are determined on a case-by-case basis, according to Rashid. “There isn’t a blanket rule or policy or law that says how long someone can be detained,” Rashid said.
What to do if your loved one gets detained
The first step someone should take if their loved one gets detained is to try to make contact with that person and find out where that person is being held, Hallett said. People can look up where someone is being detained through ICE’s online detainee locator system. Once you are able to locate where someone is being held, you can try to contact the facility and figure out how to communicate directly with the detainee. Hallett also noted it can take up to 48 hours before someone’s name appears in the system since it takes time to send a person to a detention facility and input their information.
“So if you look in the system and they’re not there immediately after arrest, you shouldn’t worry that they’ve been lost in the system,” Hallett said. “It really takes some time.”
The National Immigrant Justice Center also advises people to ask the detainee for their A-number, which they receive upon arrest.
The next step should be to seek legal counsel as quickly as possible from an attorney so that the detainee knows what their rights and options are as well as how they can best “fight their case in immigration court,” Hallett said.
Services that people can contact for legal counsel in Illinois include the National Immigrant Justice Center, Justice Entrepreneurs Project Chicago and Beyond Legal Aid. The Illinois Council for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has also compiled a list of attorney referrals for immigrant matters, which can be found here.
