Homeland Security takes Bolingbrook man into ICE custody after he appears in Kane County court on DUI

A Mexican immigrant from Bolingbrook, who had just appeared in Kane County court, was taken into custody by U.S. Homeland Security Thursday and is now being held in ICE custody at a Broadview detention facility, according to Kane County officials and public records.

Orlando Manriquez-Valdivia, 38, has Mexico listed as his country of origin, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detainee information.

He had just pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated DUI, a Class 4 felony. It was part of a plea agreement that included 24 months of probation and other charges not being prosecuted, court records show. He’d been stopped by Montgomery police about 1:39 a.m. Aug. 3, 2024, and charged with drunken driving on a suspended or revoked license.

A Class 4 felony is punishable by one to three years in prison and fines up to $25,000, or probation, as was in this case.

After reporting to probation on Thursday, Manriquez-Valdivia left the Kane County Judicial Center and was in the center’s parking lot when a Homeland Security officer took him into custody, according to sources and confirmed by Sheriff Ron Hain.

ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking more information about Manriquez-Valdivia’s arrest or details about his federal warrant.

Officials from Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, called for a sheriff’s deputy “to translate for them at the courthouse regarding a warrant [they had on] the guy leaving probation,” Hain said in a text. The deputy arrived, ”explained the warrant in Spanish, and the Feds took [Manriquez-Valdivia] into custody," Hain said.

Court Services Executive Director Lisa Aust said Manriquez-Valdivia reported to probation after court to check in.

“He called for someone (in Probation) to translate, and we went out and saw that someone – we assumed was ICE – was apprehending him,” Aust said. “We had no heads up. We had nothing.”

ICE operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Manriquez-Valdivia’s defense attorney for his DUI case, Bruce Self, did not immediately return a voicemail at his office on Friday.

Hours after Manriquez-Valdivia’s arrest, Elgin attorney Caroline Hernandez emailed Chief Judge Robert Villa asking that Villa’s office reinstate the option for remote court appearances over Zoom, “particularly those involving people of Latino descent who are now being actively targeted by ICE outside the Kane County courthouse.”

“These are not high-priority targets,” Hernandez argued in the email, which she shared with Shaw Local News Network.

“They are ordinary community members – people appearing on family law matters, civil matters, criminal matters, juvenile matters and other low-level cases – intercepted not because of what they’ve done, but because of what they look like,“ Hernandez wrote. ”What is happening is racial profiling. ICE is showing up where Latino defendants are required to be – and picking them off. That’s not law enforcement. That’s an ambush.”

The court may not control what ICE does, Hernandez wrote, but it has the right and a duty to protect the integrity of its proceedings.

“When the threat of immigration detention chills lawful participation, the court must act. You don’t need jurisdiction over ICE to ensure your courtroom doesn’t become an extension of it,” according to Hernandez’s email. “When community members are afraid to appear in court because they’re being profiled – especially when they’re already taking steps to comply with the law – that fear undermines due process.”

Hernandez’s request is limited, she wrote, to protect clients from the harm of family separation, deportation and disappearance into a detention system that does not answer to state court.

“When someone cannot attend their hearing without risking kidnapping by a federal agency, justice is no longer neutral,” Hernandez wrote. “The courthouse becomes a trap. And that’s not who we are. I urge you to act quickly to allow Zoom access for plaintiffs, respondents and defendants at risk.”

Villa, the chief judge, was not at the courthouse Friday and did not return a message left with court services seeking comment.

Ismael Cordová-Clough, director of communications for the National Coalition for Dialog and Deliberation and chairman of the Human Relations Commission for the city of Elgin, posted photos on his Facebook page of Manriquez-Valdivia being arrested in front of the courthouse.

Cordová-Clough said he also collaborates with the Elgin Area Rapid Response, a group that is part of a larger organization that investigates and supports families impacted by ICE.

“I am a community advocate,” Cordová-Clough said of his Facebook postings.

“It started because I am first-generation American born, and I grew up in a heavily immigrant community. I started posting because the people that I knew were either immigrants themselves or related to them,” Cordová-Clough said. “And because of my posting, my following grew and is almost at 18,000 followers. A lot of community members rely on my updates every day to stay informed of ICE sightings.”