Eriksen Ventura Romero had just dropped off his pregnant wife at a West Town clinic one morning last October when he found himself surrounded by eight heavily armed Border Patrol agents.
Outside the Erie Family Health Center on West Superior Street, Ventura Romero, a Venezuelan native who was in the midst of immigration proceedings, handed an agent his employment authorization and FaceTimed his wife inside the clinic to warn her their Jeep had been boxed in, federal court records show.
After declaring that Ventura Romero was here illegally, an agent was captured on body-worn camera footage warning they were going to smash his window if he didn’t get out of the car. “My wife is there, how can I leave her alone? She does not have anyone else here, it is just me,” Ventura Romero pleaded in Spanish, according to court records.
What unfolded over the next 90 seconds was a microcosm of Operation Midway Blitz. The agent smashed the Jeep’s window with a baton and Ventura Romero was dragged crying from the car. Bystanders blew whistles and yelled at the agents as they took cellphone video. Ventura Romero struggled a bit, was cuffed behind his back, shocked repeatedly with a Taser and pushed head first into an unmarked government vehicle. Then they drove away.
That was Oct. 24, 2025, some 223 days ago. The full force of Midway Blitz effectively ended in Chicago two weeks later — but not for Ventura Romero. He has spent the next seven months in various jails as his arrest was challenged in court. He was pressured to self-deport and transferred to a federal immigrant camp in El Paso, Texas, for removal proceedings. He missed the birth of his son.
But this week he’s finally coming home.
A federal judge on Monday ruled that Ventura Romero’s arrest violated a long-running consent decree and ordered him released from custody without any bond restrictions as deportation proceedings play out, court records show.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said the bodycam footage and other evidence from the scene that day showed Ventura Romero, who has no criminal history, had been subjected to “a warrantless arrest without probable cause that he posed a risk of escape before a warrant could be obtained.”
Ventura Romero, 29, who came to the U.S. in October 2023 and was “paroled” into the country pending asylum application, must be released from custody in the Western District of Texas no later than noon on Thursday, according to Cummings’ order.
The government complied with the judge’s order and Ventura Romero was released and reunited with his family, according to their attorney, Jackie García. The family did not wish to comment for this story.
For Ventura Romero’s family, the judge’s order finally overturned what was a completely unnecessary arrest, one that left him hundreds of miles from his family, including his wife who was eight months into a high-risk pregnancy at the time.
But like many aspects of the Trump administration’s controversial Midway Blitz immigration operations, Ventura Romero’s treatment by agents that day had ripple effects far beyond just him, extending to witnesses and employees at the Erie Family Health Center, a neighborhood provider of medical care for the underserved and uninsured.
One video of the arrest circulating online appeared to be taken from inside the clinic’s second floor. As agents surround Ventura Romero’s car carrying large rifles and bystanders begin to yell at them, the woman apparently taking the video exclaims, “Oh, my God, look, the doctor down there and everything.”
Another woman on the video says, “They’re pulling guns on the damn staff! Y’all better stay in here!”
García, an attorney with Casa de León who has represented Ventura Romero in his habeas case, said his family first contacted her in January after she’d successfully represented one of Ventura Romero’s former cellmates, who was released through a habeas petition.
The two men’s wives connected while their husbands remained in detention and helped put García in touch with Ventura Romero’s family.
According to García, Ventura Romero’s case reflects a broader pattern she has seen in multiple cases involving asylum-seekers detained after immigration raids. She said many of her clients had entered the U.S. lawfully, complied with immigration requirements, attended hearings and ICE check-ins, obtained work permits and driver’s licenses and were actively pursuing asylum claims before being detained and transferred to facilities in Texas.
One of the most devastating consequences of prolonged detention is the separation of families, García said.
“Their asylum cases are no longer together, which prejudices everyone because, of course, the case is strongest when everyone’s able to testify together as witnesses,” she said.
The burden extends beyond the courtroom. Families are left scrambling to cover rent, childcare and legal expenses.
“It’s also extremely economically burdensome for the family because they’re often losing the breadwinner in their family,” García said.
Ventura Romero’s wife said in a written declaration to the court she was “alone” for the duration of her pregnancy and their son’s birth less than two months later. The baby had extreme jaundice, which the nurses “attributed to stress,” and he had to spend more than a week in the intensive care receiving blood transfusions, she said.
She said that since her husband’s arrest and the sudden loss of financial support, she’s been living in a church and “completely dependent on the church for my and my son’s needs.”
Among those who witnessed Ventura Romero’s arrest was Roberto Mendez, an employee arriving for work that morning at Erie Neighborhood House, which shares a campus with the health center.
Mendez said in an interview with the Tribune he was looking for parking when he noticed what appeared to be immigration agents surrounding a vehicle outside the clinic.
“I saw men in a military outfit standing in front of the car window, and I was like, ‘Oh, no,'” Mendez recalled.
Following organizational protocols established in response to immigration enforcement activity, Mendez alerted leadership at the organization and began recording the encounter.
His video captured part of the arrest, which quickly drew the attention of clinic staff, community members and rapid-response volunteers who had been monitoring enforcement activity in the neighborhood.
But it was Ventura Romero’s wife that Mendez remembers most.
Inside the clinic, the visibly pregnant woman watched as agents detained her husband, Mendez said. She became increasingly distressed and wanted to leave the building, Mendez said, but staff urged her to stay safe.
“She was crying,” he recalled. “I just remember her crying, saying, ‘What am I gonna do? I’m now all alone.'”
Months later, that moment remains vivid.
“I think that’s the thing that I remember the most,” Mendez said. “Just her in tears saying, ‘I’m alone,’ and basically feeling helpless.”
In her court declaration, Ventura Romero’s wife wrote about the trauma of looking out the window to see him being dragged out of their Jeep.
“I began to shake, and my legs went numb,” she wrote. “I wanted to go outside with him but couldn’t move. The nurses stopped me. I began to vomit and they pulled me into a waiting room and told me to stay calm and think of my baby.”
In the initial report of Ventura Romero’s arrest, a Border Patrol agent stated Ventura Romero “continued to refuse compliance” even after multiple warnings he was under arrest, then struggled with officers and “attempted to flee on foot.”
“Ventura Romero continued to actively resist by pushing against me and refusing to enter the rear of our unmarked unit despite commands to do so,” the report stated.
The agent said he applied the Taser four times to Ventura Romero’s lower back “to overcome this active physical resistance and complete the arrest in the presence of the hostile crowd.”
While the videos of the incident do show Ventura Romero struggling with agents immediately after he was removed from his car, he never attempted to run and appeared to be trying to turn to call out to his wife.
One of the last things he said that was captured on bodycam was “I’m going, I’m going,” and “Ask my wife for the documents,” according to a transcription of the footage in court records.
In seeking to keep Ventura Romero held without bond, attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that agents had a reasonable suspicion that he was in the country illegally and that arrest was necessary because he was likely to flee, court records show.
But Cummings ruled Monday it was “far from clear” that the agents had reason to question Ventura Romero in the first place, saying the government had provided no justification other than the fact he “was seated in the driver’s seat of a parked car.”
“No case (to this Court’s knowledge) has ever held that the fact that a person is sitting in parked car, standing alone, provides reasonable suspicion to question that person about their immigration status,” Cummings wrote. “But there is one additional fact that the agents observed: (Ventura Romero) is a Latino man with a medium-brown complexion.”
What’s more, Cummings said, agents knew from their brief questioning of Ventura Romero that he was legally employed as a laborer, had family in the area and was about to become a father.
The judge also took issue with agents claiming Ventura Romero was a flight risk, noting he had no weapons and “was surrounded by eight armed CBP agents.”
“It is inconceivable that he could have escaped on foot even if he had wanted to leave his vehicle,” Cummings said.
The order to release Ventura Romero was the latest development in the 2022 consent decree known as the Castañon Nava agreement, which bars agents from making warrantless immigration arrests unless they have probable cause to believe someone is in the U.S. unlawfully and that the person is a flight risk.
Over the past year, immigration rights attorneys have worked with families of hundreds of people arrested both before, during and after Operation Midway Blitz, reviewing arrest reports to identify violations of the consent decree, negotiating with the Department of Justice on release of individuals and petitioning Cummings when the administration disagreed.
So far, the court has ordered the release of about 200 people and forced the government to return bond payments or lift conditions of relief for more than 170 others. Many, though, have been deported or voluntarily removed amid the slow pace of litigation and the harsh conditions of detention that many immigrants faced.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Fleming, the head of litigation for the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Tribune last month the number of outstanding issues has dwindled since Operation Midway Blitz ended late last year, and the lawsuit was expected to wind down in the coming weeks.
In a statement Thursday, Allena Martin, a senior litigation attorney with the NIJC, said Ventura Romero’s case “is an example of the cruelty and injustice of ICE and CBP’s campaign of racial profiling and mass arrests during Midway Blitz.”
“The evidence showed that Mr. Ventura Romero was already in immigration court proceedings and fully cooperating, so there was no legitimate reason to detain him, except to further their goal of arresting and detaining as many people as possible to please the White House,” Martin said.
Ventura Romero’s arrest, meanwhile, still reverberates at the Erie Family Health Center and surrounding neighborhood.
Mendez said some families became hesitant to seek services in person, prompting community organizations to expand virtual options and strengthen emergency-response protocols.
At the same time, he said, neighbors rallied around affected families. Volunteers stood watch outside facilities, escorted patients and families to and from vehicles and helped reassure people who were afraid to leave their cars.
For Mendez, Ventura Romero’s case became a reminder not only of the fear created by the arrest but also of the community response that followed.
“It showed the beauty and impact of community support,” he said.
Cristina De La Rosa, Erie Neighborhood House’s executive director, said in a statement to the Tribune they were “grateful” for the judge’s ruling, and that Ventura Romero would be reunited with his family.
“That is a victory for justice and human dignity,” she said.
