Key takeaways
- Cook County prosecutors are requesting warrants for the arrest of noncitizens who failed to show up to their misdemeanor traffic court hearings because they had already been arrested by federal immigration agents.
- Injustice Watch has identified eight people who couldn’t show up for their court dates on misdemeanor traffic charges in Cook County between June 2025 and April 2026 because they had been arrested by federal immigration officers.
- In half of these cases, the defendant was still in federal custody when prosecutors learned of their whereabouts, but they failed to get that person to court. Defense attorneys and immigrants’ rights advocates argue this is a violation of defendants’ due process rights.
- An outstanding warrant can make it difficult for noncitizens to legally return to the United States. If they do return and are arrested on an outstanding warrant, they will likely be turned over to ICE again.
It seemed, at first, to be a typical day in traffic court. A steady flow of people trickled in and out of Courtroom 406 at the Richard J. Daley Center, while others waited patiently for their cases to be called from boxes on a Zoom screen displayed on a large TV monitor.
A little after 9 a.m., Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Cabonargi called the case of Gustavo Cuchiparte. He was scheduled to appear that Friday in February for a misdemeanor DUI case.
But Cuchiparte wasn’t there. Instead, when Cabonargi called his name, Cuchiparte’s wife, Naida, a short woman with long black hair tied into a low-hanging ponytail, stood up and walked to the center of the room. Their 11-year-old son stood behind her.
Through a Spanish interpreter, she explained that her husband had been deported back to their native Ecuador just the previous day. After being arrested by federal immigration agents in late December and suffering for weeks in detention, Cuchiparte had agreed to self-deport.
Kelsey Kamil, a freshman Cook County assistant state’s attorney assigned to the case that day, immediately requested that Cabonargi issue a warrant for Cuchiparte’s arrest.
Cabonargi seemed stumped. The appointed judge with deep Democratic Party ties had been on the bench for less than eight months. He turned to an eager-looking public defender named Luke Kula who was assigned to his courtroom that day, and asked him to weigh in.
“Judge, we’ve come across this issue before,” Kula said, referring to other people in the past year who had missed their traffic court hearings because they had been arrested by federal immigration agents. “I would just point out that a warrant is generally issued if someone cannot come to court on their own volition. And in this situation, it would strain logic to say that he did not come to court of his own free will.”
Under the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act, when a defendant misses a court date, judges are encouraged to issue a summons instead of a warrant. For traffic offenses, judges can also continue the case for 30 days to give the defendant another chance to appear. In those cases, the clerk’s office sends a notice to the defendant warning that another absence could result in a warrant. This does not include cases where a person is unable to appear for no fault of their own.
This was Cuchiparte’s second missed hearing, but he had been arrested by immigration officers before ever having the chance to appear in court.
Cabonargi turned back to Kamil, the prosecutor. He pointed out that the court was required to give Cuchiparte proper notice of the warrant before he could issue one, which it hadn’t. And even if it had, the judge said, he “wasn’t inclined to issue a warrant.”
That said, Cabonargi also wanted to ensure there was “some sort of record” of Cuchiparte’s charges in case he ever returned to the U.S.
But before Cabonargi could make a decision, his supervising judge, Diann Marsalek, emerged through a side door of the courtroom in her long black robe and asked him to step outside with her.
“Hold on for one second,” Cabonargi said to the attorneys.
Most new judges are assigned to traffic court. As the presiding judge there, Marsalek sometimes pops in and out of courtrooms, answering any questions and advising judges on court procedure. But judges are still expected to act independently and make decisions based on their own interpretation of the law.
Cabonargi returned minutes later with a solemn look on his face. He was no longer hesitant.
“The court will be issuing a warrant,” he said. “I understand it’s a policy of the state’s attorney’s office to seek a warrant in these situations.”
Kula became flustered, asking several times whether prosecutors had ever requested a writ — a written court order that would have required any law enforcement agency holding Cuchiparte to bring him to court.
It was “not possible” to get someone from ICE custody, Cabonargi said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been notorious for refusing to release people from custody despite orders from federal immigration judges.
Regardless, Cabonargi had made his decision: He would issue the warrant.
Cuchiparte’s wife and son left the courtroom quietly. Kula went back to his desk.
In the fall of 2025, thousands of people in the Chicago area were arrested by the Trump administration in a targeted federal immigration enforcement action known as Operation Midway Blitz. The crackdown sent waves of fear rippling through immigrant communities and disrupted daily life throughout the city. That included in the county courts, where federal immigration authorities arrested immigrants who had shown up for routine hearings.
In response to the chaos, the public defender’s office and several local advocacy groups successfully petitioned Cook County’s chief judge to sign an order barring federal immigration officials from conducting civil immigration arrests in or near county courthouses without a judicial warrant.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke did not sign the petition. Nor did her office issue any press releases condemning federal action or voicing support for the city’s immigrant communities — something several other county officials, including the Cook County Board president, had done.
Then, during a County Board meeting in October, Burke denounced the “thuggish behavior” of ICE agents. She explained that if victims and witnesses were too afraid to come to court, prosecutors wouldn’t be able to proceed with trial. In those cases, she said, prosecutors would “have to dismiss charges and release extremely violent people back into the community.”
But that’s not what was happening in traffic court. There, prosecutors working under Burke were requesting warrants for the arrest of noncitizens with misdemeanor cases who had failed to show up to their hearings.
Cuchiparte is one of eight people Injustice Watch has been able to identify who couldn’t show up for their court dates on their misdemeanor traffic charges in Cook County because they had been arrested by federal immigration officers between June 2025 and April 2026. All but two — who are still in federal custody — were later deported. It’s not clear how many people with a pending criminal or civil case have been arrested and deported by federal agents in that same window of time, as the county court system doesn’t track people’s immigration status.
In all but two cases, prosecutors requested a warrant based on the defendant’s absence, despite knowing that person had no way of making it to court on their own. In half of the cases, the defendant was still in federal custody when prosecutors learned of their whereabouts, but they failed to get that person to court. Defense attorneys and immigrants’ rights advocates argue this is a violation of defendants’ due process rights.
In several cases, prosecutors have referred in court to an office policy or a directive from their traffic court supervisor as a reason for requesting warrants.
Burke’s office denies having any such policy in writing. But in an emailed statement, she said prosecutors in her office always seek warrants “when someone charged with a serious traffic offense fails to appear in court.
“These warrants help ensure that defendants are brought back to court to face the charges against them,” Burke said.
A defendant’s immigration status “plays no role in the decision to request a warrant,” Burke said, “Nor is it considered in any other action that our office takes.”
In a sit-down interview, Chief Judge Charles Beach said he wasn’t aware of any state’s attorney policy related to warrants.
“Every judge should, and I believe does, weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances before deciding to issue a warrant. I think a warrant is usually our last resort, but you want to make sure someone’s given an opportunity to get to court.”
In Cuchiparte’s case, Beach denied any suggestion that supervising judge Marsalek told Cabonargi how to rule on the prosecutors’ request for a warrant.
“[Judge Marsalek] might have advised him that this is why the state’s attorney is asking for this warrant, because that is their policy,” Beach said. “The policy is very clear: We don’t tell judges what to do on decision-making.”
An outstanding warrant can make it difficult for noncitizens to legally return to the United States. If they do return and are arrested on an outstanding warrant, especially in a county or state that doesn’t limit its cooperation with federal immigration authorities, they will likely be turned over to ICE again.
It’s common for prosecutors in felony cases to request warrants when defendants miss their court date, but several public defenders said they were surprised to hear prosecutors requesting warrants in misdemeanor cases, especially ones where the defendant had already been deported.
“Everyone, no matter what the charge is, should have an opportunity to present their case, cross-examine evidence, and do all of those things that are entitled to them in our criminal justice system,” says Guadalupe Perez, an attorney in the Cook County public defender’s office’s immigration division. “If people are being charged with any sort of crime, are we affording them those due process mechanisms that are in place for everyone regardless of citizenship?”
Nick Moroni, an assistant Cook County public defender who had been working in traffic court since 2024, first witnessed prosecutors requesting warrants this way last summer, after one of his clients stopped showing up to court.
Moroni primarily handled cases involving misdemeanor DUIs and suspended licenses. They were relatively straightforward and typically didn’t result in anything more serious for his clients than a fine or mandatory supervision. (The simplicity of these kinds of cases is one reason new judges and attorneys often get their first assignments in traffic court.)
When the second Trump administration launched its mass deportation campaign, Moroni was mindful that a guilty finding could impact his clients’ ability to stay in the country — certain misdemeanors are considered deportable offenses. The public defender’s office’s immigration division was created in 2020 in part to handle such cases. The unit has seen a nearly 700% increase in referrals since it started tracking data the following year.
Then, in March 2025, one of Moroni’s clients, a man named Mario, missed his court date. Mario had several misdemeanor charges, including a DUI. Fearing he had been deported, Moroni checked ICE’s online detainee locator system and found that Mario was being held at an immigration detention facility in Georgia. On June 30, he was deported to Mexico. (We’re only using Mario’s first name as neither Moroni nor Injustice Watch have been able to reach him since he was deported.)
At a hearing in July, Moroni informed the judge and prosecutors of his client’s predicament.
“I talked with my supervisor,” the prosecutor, Assistant State’s Attorney Anthony Aviza, said in response. “She had told me that because we don’t know his whereabouts or anything like that, that we are just seeking a warrant.”
In response, Moroni filed a 19-page motion to dismiss the case. He later stood in the middle of the courtroom, and for an hour argued that prosecutors had violated his client’s due process rights when they failed to secure his presence in court.
“It was not possible for him to participate from an ICE detention facility,” Moroni said.
Cook County Circuit Judge Phillip Fowler denied Moroni’s motion to dismiss the case, issued the warrant, and told Moroni he didn’t think prosecutors had committed any due process violations. As soon as prosecutors learned Mario was in ICE custody, Fowler said, they tried to confirm his whereabouts. But Mario had apparently been “moved around” before being deported, Fowler said, and prosecutors said they had not been able to find him. (Moving detainees among different facilities is common practice for ICE, but prosecutors didn’t present any evidence in court that this had happened to Mario.)
Mario’s was one of two cases Injustice Watch found where judges issued a warrant despite knowing the defendant was not able to come to court. Fowler told Injustice Watch he could not comment on pending cases, and referred questions back to the chief judge’s office.
“I was surprised,” Moroni said of Mario’s case in a recent interview. “At the end of the day, this was a person who, based on the evidence that the state provided to the court, was only unable to come to court because the government prevented him from coming to court.
“If he has any interaction with law enforcement, he could be detained again,” Moroni added. “He could relive this process again.”
In a statement, Burke said federal authorities and law enforcement in out-of-state jurisdictions do not have to comply with a formal request for the defendant to appear in court. She added that her office does not coordinate with or receive information from ICE regarding a defendant’s whereabouts.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security recently told Block Club Chicago that noncitizens with underlying criminal or civil cases would miss their court dates as they went through deportation proceedings. But Lauren Bis, an acting assistant secretary of DHS, wrote in an emailed statement that “ICE complies with all court orders when given sufficient notice to do so.”
Beyond his concern for Mario, Moroni also feared Fowler’s ruling would set a precedent for future cases. He was especially worried about another client, a man named Manuel, who had similarly been arrested by federal immigration agents and deported before having the chance to resolve his misdemeanor traffic case. (And who we are also referring to only by his first name.)
Moroni filed a motion to dismiss Manuel’s case, too. But during a hearing in early February, the prosecutor told the judge that ICE had been unresponsive to requests from their office in other cases; it was highly unlikely ICE would agree to bring Manuel to court. Instead, the prosecutor said he “didn’t have to issue a warrant” and agreed to strike the case off the judge’s call. That meant the case would still be active, but no future court dates would be set.
Moroni looked dumbfounded — it was an unexpected win for him and his client. But a question remained, both for him and other public defenders encountering this issue: Why was the state’s attorney’s office requesting these warrants in the first place?
While Operation Midway Blitz was underway, State’s Attorney Burke — a former circuit and appellate court judge — refused to criticize the Trump administration, citing her office’s “excellent working relationships” with federal law enforcement, according to emails that were later revealed in a federal court filing.
As the operation dragged on, Burke was confronted with questions about her ability to prosecute federal agents accused of misconduct. A group of community leaders and elected officials later petitioned for a special prosecutor to handle those cases instead of Burke, because of her office’s professed relationship with the federal government and because, they said in court documents, she was “turning a blind eye” to the actions of federal agents.
Burke has since publicly opposed the appointment of a special prosecutor, and has argued that her office has “repeatedly and consistently denounced the Trump administration’s abuse of the law.” A Cook County judge recently ruled her in favor and rejected the petitioners’ request for a special prosecutor.
In a two-minute video circulated to her employees in late January, Burke appeared to voice some disapproval of the federal government’s actions. She granted that it was “incredibly difficult” to ignore what was happening to undocumented immigrants nationally, and offered a reminder that, as prosecutors, their job was to uphold the law.
“Every victim of crime, no matter their citizenship status, has dignity and deserves justice,” Burke said. “And every person accused of committing a crime deserves the constitutional protections that we have all sworn to uphold. Immigration status never enters into that equation.”
Still, prosecutors in at least four misdemeanor traffic cases have referenced an “office policy” in open court that supposedly guides them to seek a warrant in cases where the defendant has been deported.
During a July hearing on a misdemeanor DUI case involving a then-23-year-old Ecuadorian man who was deported while his case was pending, Assistant State’s Attorney Owen Doherty explained to the judge that requesting a warrant was standard procedure.
“It’s up to your honor here, but it’s office policy,” Doherty said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “If they come back, then we have a warrant ready for them.”
Cuchiparte and his family began their journey to the U.S. in the fall of 2022. In pictures he later posted to TikTok, Cuchiparte, his wife and sons can be seen wearing knee-high rain boots slick with mud. At times, they slept huddled next to each other on the jungle floor.
After a month of traveling by foot, they reached a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. About a year after their arrival, Cuchiparte says, they began the process of seeking asylum on the basis that they had been discriminated against as Indigenous people while living in Ecuador.
Eventually they settled into a modest bungalow in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood. Cuchiparte found a job at a nearby warehouse, while his wife worked part time at a hotel. Their two sons attended neighborhood schools. They also had a community of relatives and friends who lived nearby. A sense of normalcy settled into their lives.
All that changed on the evening of Dec. 14, 2025. Cuchiparte says he and two of his cousins were leaving an uncle’s birthday party when they decided to sit in his SUV and talk over some beers. According to a police report, they parked on a residential street that runs alongside Hermosa Park. The temperature that night had dropped into the single digits, so Cuchiparte kept the car running, keys in the ignition, to stay warm. Before they knew it, they had dozed off.
Some time later, two Chicago police officers arrived on the scene. According to body-worn camera footage of the incident, which was obtained through a FOIA request, one of the officers knocked on the car window and had Cuchiparte step out of the car. Cuchiparte appeared to stumble, and at times leaned on a nearby tree for balance. At one point, he called his wife and put her on speakerphone. (The footage of Cuchiparte’s arrest was heavily blurred; the Chicago Police Department did not respond to questions about why.)
Cuchiparte eventually agreed to a field sobriety test, but failed. The video shows him having trouble walking forward in a straight line and balancing on one foot. After police placed him in handcuffs, he began crying. As the officers led him to their car, he turned to his cousins and gave them a tearful goodbye.
“I love you so much,” he told them.
During the drive to the police station, which was also captured on video, Cuchiparte continued weeping loudly from the back seat, as one of the officers, Jose Navarrete, told him not to worry.
“Hey, muchacho, I’m not going to deport you,” Navarrete said in Spanish. “I’m not immigration. … Chicago doesn’t work with immigration.” (Under the Illinois Trust Act, law enforcement agencies across the state are barred from assisting in federal civil immigration arrests.)
But despite Navarette’s assurances, the day before his first hearing in traffic court, Cuchiparte was arrested by ICE.
A video of the arrest was posted to social media by a friend of Cuchiparte’s who happened to be nearby. It showed what appeared to be a group of federal agents, some wearing tactical gear and masks, surrounding Cuchiparte’s SUV in unmarked cars at the intersection of Belmont and Lavergne avenues. Cuchiparte, who was handcuffed, was placed into the back seat of one of the cars.
“I was just trying to get to work that morning,” Cuchiparte recalled. “And I knew I had court the next morning.”
In a statement, DHS spokesperson Bis confirmed Cuchiparte was arrested by ICE after being charged with the “illegal transportation of liquor and a DUI.”
“One of the tactics during Operation Midway Blitz — and frankly since the second Trump administration — is that they have ICE officers who are tracking booking information from local law enforcement,” said Mark Fleming, the associate director of federal litigation for the National Immigrant Justice Center. President Donald Trump promised to target the “worst of the worst” through his mass deportation campaign, but many of the people who have been swept up in ICE raids had no criminal history. Some, like Cuchiparte, had been charged with low-level offenses but never convicted. He had no prior criminal history.
After his ICE arrest, Cuchiparte was eventually taken to Indiana’s Clay County Jail, where he remained in custody for more than a month. Early in his stay, he says, he developed gastritis — a painful inflammation of the stomach lining. According to Cuchiparte, he repeatedly asked for medical treatment but was ignored by the guards.
In an emailed statement, DHS spokesperson Bis said Cuchiparte had been treated for gastritis and acid reflux, and that it is a “longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care” from the moment people enter ICE custody.
But Cuchiparte says that by February, his pain became unbearable, and he asked to be deported back to Ecuador. In a video he later uploaded to TikTok, Cuchiparte can be seen walking through an airport in Guayaquil wearing black clothes and oversized slippers. His overgrown hair hangs to the side of his head. In one hand he carries a white trash bag filled with his belongings. With the other, he reaches for his relatives in an emotional embrace. Months later, he was joined by his wife and two sons.
Since returning to Ecuador, he’s been recovering at home. He regularly posts videos for his nearly 7,000 TikTok followers of him and his family dancing to traditional Ecuadorian music with lyrics about the experience of migrating to the U.S. The caption on one of his posts reads, “I was not a bad person, just a migrant but a good person.”
After the hearing in February, Cuchiparte’s wife stopped going to court. She eventually left to rejoin her husband in Ecuador. They were both under the impression that Cabonargi had issued the warrant for his arrest. But they didn’t know that Cabonargi had scheduled another court date for late March — a final opportunity for Cuchiparte to make an appearance before he signed the warrant. Kula, the public defender, eventually filed paperwork to represent Cuchiparte formally.
Judges in traffic court rotate courtrooms as a way to maintain fairness to defendants. And so, on March 26, Carla Alessio Policandriotes, a retired judge from Will County who was recalled by the Illinois Supreme Court late last year to fill an apparent judge shortage in Cook County, was on the bench to make a final ruling on whether to issue a warrant for Cuchiparte’s arrest.
“In other cases when I’ve been asked for a warrant, I’m told about the nature of other charges or some other aggravating factors, and there’s nothing here,” she said before handing down her ruling. She denied the state’s request.
Cuchiparte was relieved to hear that he didn’t have an outstanding warrant, but he still wondered about how to resolve his underlying case.
Perez, from the public defender’s office’s immigration unit, said even without an outstanding warrant, it can be difficult for noncitizens to return to the U.S. with an unresolved case. Even if the person could appear through Zoom, it’s not clear how they would be able to participate through normal legal proceedings.
“If they have to plead guilty and get community service, how are they going to complete the community service or victim impact panels from their home country?” she wondered.
It’s also possible that some people may never know about the status of their pending case, or if they, too, have an outstanding warrant. Moroni, the public defender, lost touch with his clients after they were deported and had no way to communicate with them about the outcome of their cases. Cuchiparte did not know of the status of his case until told by a reporter in a recent phone call.
All of this is happening as the federal government continues its immigration crackdown, which has introduced a number of legal battles across the country over myriad due process violations occurring at every stage of the deportation process, including detaining people without a proper hearing and allegedly denying them access to counsel.
Whether defendants in these misdemeanor traffic cases plan to return to the U.S. is uncertain. As for Cuchiparte, he wants to return to the U.S. legally with his family one day.
“My kids had a lot of opportunities there,” he said.
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