* WTTW…

A man was detained outside a Chicago charter school Wednesday morning, apparently by agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to charter officials.

In a letter to families Wednesday, officials with the Acero charter school network said the individual was taken into custody by ICE agents.

An ICE spokesperson on Thursday confirmed its agents arrested 37-year-old Francisco Andrade-Berrera — whom they identified as a citizen of Mexico — without incident. ICE in its statement claimed Andrade-Berrera is “a known member of a violent street gang with criminal convictions for drug trafficking, gang loitering, and damage to property,” whom they said was previously “removed from the U.S. to his home country in 2005 and 2013.”

* But when it comes to providing records of all ICE arrests in Illinois and Chicago, journalists get the cold shoulder. Block Club Chicago…

Over the last five weeks, Block Club submitted more than a dozen inquiries and records requests to ICE seeking basic information about the enforcement actions during the early days of Trump’s new administration.

The agency has not answered any of Block Club’s questions directly. It has also failed to produce even a summary of people it has rounded up or the charges they’ve faced.

On two occasions, ICE public affairs officials responded with promises to follow up later with information. They never did.

Another time, an ICE official emailed a written statement that didn’t answer any questions and included no information about the January arrests. Block Club’s follow-up questions were ignored.

* The Sun-Times in January…

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released little information about the people who were detained or why they were sought. Nationwide, ICE said 956 arrests were made Sunday. The Trump administration says it “removed” 7,300 people in its first week, “including hundreds of convicted criminals.” ICE averaged 311 daily national arrests through Sept. 30.

Bloomberg News reported that 260 people were targeted in the Chicago area on Sunday, although just seven had criminal arrest warrants.

* Last month, the Tribune was able to piece together where some immigration detainees were being held…

[T]hough, precise information about who was swept up and why remains elusive, as federal officials have declined to release detailed information about raids in Chicago. And even though national data from the first few weeks of the Trump administration have begun to trickle in, an independent group that compiles the figures said in a news release Wednesday that its analysts found inconsistencies.

In a system where people can be detained with little public information available, rosters for out-of-state jails that hold many Chicago-area detainees offer one of the only glimpses of people taken into custody amid the heightened fear and uncertainty of the past several weeks.

Though they do not represent a complete picture, the jail logs, obtained by the Tribune via public records requests, present a rare, if narrow, window into a byzantine and opaque immigration system, where people can be detained and not go before a judge for weeks, or even months. In contrast, in Illinois’ criminal justice system, arrestees must go before a judge within 48 hours and police must make arrest reports with identifying information available within 72 hours. […]

Of the nearly 200 detainee names reviewed by the Tribune, about half could not be located with confidence in national databases or local public record searches. Some appeared linked to other states in the Midwest or across the country.

* More…

* Aurora Beacon-News | Fear of ICE arrests keeping customers at home, immigrant-owned businesses in Aurora say: Of its nearly 180,000 residents, Aurora is more than 40% Hispanic, according to the most recent available census data, compared to 19% in Illinois and just under 30% in Chicago. Its population was just over 25% foreign-born from 2019-2023, compared to roughly 14% in Illinois and just over 20% in Chicago. In Aurora, Salmeron described a chilling effect from the Trump administration’s immigration policies. With a customer base made up of mostly Hispanic residents, some of whom are undocumented, he said his business and those around him are struggling to stay afloat.

* Axios | DHS registration order affects 400,000 Illinoisans: Last week, the Trump administration ordered all undocumented people in the U.S. to register with the Department of Homeland Security or face criminal penalties. Why it matters: Illinois is home to an estimated 400,000 unauthorized immigrants whose presence here constitutes a civil, not criminal, violation. This order may force them to choose between criminal charges for not registering or registration followed by deportation. […] ICE officials have, so far, failed to show how many individuals they apprehended in Illinois during January raids had criminal records.

* NPR | ICE is making more arrests, but critics say some claims don’t add up: ICE made a total of more than 113,000 arrests last year. The vast majority were “custodial” arrests, meaning the target was already in the custody of state or local officials. A far smaller number of the arrests that ICE makes are considered “at large.” But Noem’s statement doesn’t make any of that clear. It also doesn’t specify how many of the 20,000 arrests ICE made in February were considered “at large” arrests and how many were not, leaving immigration experts frustrated.