Dario Quevedo Marquez, a Venezuelan immigrant, went to a South Side courthouse last week for a hearing over a misdemeanor battery charge.

But on April 15, as Quevedo Marquez left the Branch 35 & 38 courthouse, 727 E. 111th St., federal immigration agents arrested him. His wife, Daymelis Martinez, said she tried to ask agents in Spanish why they were taking him.

An agent told Martinez to stay quiet or she’d be arrested, too, she said. She could not risk being separated from their children — ages 15, 12 and 11 — as they go through their asylum proceedings and seek to build a life in Chicago, she said.

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

While the chaotic raids of this fall’s Operation Midway Blitz have faded, federal agents continue to arrest immigrants in the Chicago area, sometimes with legally questionable tactics.

One of those tactics: targeting noncitizens at court buildings, like what happened to Quevedo Marquez. These arrests violate a state law and a county judge’s order that bans civil immigration arrests without warrants at local courthouses, officials said.

“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,” Matthew Hendrickson, spokesperson for the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, said in an emailed statement.

While reports of federal immigration enforcement seemed to slow at the start of the year, recent weeks have seen more reports of people being arrested and federal agents being spotted in the city and suburbs, including near courthouses, organizers said.

✍️ Full story by @francia_garciah + @chegg44 in our link in bio.