DOJ Cries ‘Gamesmanship’ in Move to Dismiss Case Against ICE

Chicago protesters’ move to dismiss their suit challenging immigration agents’ use of force was “procedural gamesmanship,” a US Department of Justice attorney said Thursday, noting that plaintiffs filed the dismissal motion before an appellate court had a chance to decide the merits of the case.

If the case is dismissed with prejudice, as the plaintiffs have requested, that dismissal would prevent protesters and journalists from filing similar suits in the future, attorney Elizabeth Hedges said.

Judge Sara Ellis of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois told Hedges she disagreed.

“The preclusive effect that you would hope to achieve with a dismissal with prejudice is not what you think it is,” she said.

The class complaint was brought by a coalition of journalists, clergy and demonstrators alleging that agents in “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Chicago-area immigration crackdown, used indiscriminate violence against them.

After contentious litigation, Ellis sided with the plaintiffs, certifying a class and issuing a preliminary injunction governing agents’ use of force. The administration appealed the injunction to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which imposed a pause, saying the order was overbroad.

Plaintiffs this week moved to dismiss the case altogether, saying immigration enforcement operations have wound down in Chicago such that they haven’t received reports of unconstitutional behavior in nearly a month.

Ellis on Thursday didn’t immediately rule on the motion to dismiss so that members of the class would have time to file objections. She scheduled a hearing for early January.

And when Hedges insisted that the Department of Homeland Security was still active in the city, Ellis said it’s been widely publicized that the Trump administration’s immigration priorities have shifted away from Chicago.

“Operation Midway Blitz, in the manner that it was operating in September and October and early November of this year, is that going to happen again?” Ellis asked. “Or are you saying it’s not going to happen again? Or are you saying we don’t know and cannot say?”

Hedges said the plaintiffs could draw whatever conclusions they wanted to from news reports, but “they’re wrong to allege it’s over.”

And Hedges insisted that since Ellis certified a class including people who will in the future protest or record immigration operations, any dismissal with prejudice would prevent class members from making similar claims going forward.

Plaintiff attorneys strenuously disagreed.

“A dismissal of this lawsuit can in no way give the defendants a free hall pass to beat up press, protesters, priests, months, years from now, and commit other Constitutional violations,” attorney Craig Futterman of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic said. “That’s not how the law works.”

Ellis indicated she didn’t think a dismissal with prejudice would bar class members from filing future claims, but said the subject is “best left for another day.”

“Hopefully that day will never come,” she said. “I lost my crystal ball a long time ago, so I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I think hopefully we won’t ever have to get there.”

Plaintiffs are also represented by Loevy & Loevy, Protect Democracy Project, First Defense Legal Aid, Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU Inc.

The case is Chicago Headline Club v. Noem, N.D. Ill., No. 1:25-cv-12173, hearing 12/4/25.