When he witnessed a high-speed car crash, Norberto Navarro-Torres rushed to help the injured and called 911. He agreed to testify in court against the driver who caused the crash, which killed a pregnant woman and her three children.
For his trouble, Will County Sheriff’s officers had him held in jail for two months and planned to turn him over to immigration officials after he took the stand, a violation of state law and Navarro-Torres’ civil rights, according to a lawsuit Navarro-Torres filed Thursday in federal court.
Navarro-Torres, 31, would eventually testify against Sean Woulfe, who was charged with reckless homicide in the 2017 deaths of Lindsey Schmidt and her three sons, who had been on their way to bible camp when Woulfe plowed into their car at high speed after blowing through the stop sign on a backroad in rural Beecher, Illinois. On the witness stand at Woulfe’s trial in 2022, Navarro-Torres described the collision as sounding “like an explosion.”
In the years between the crash and Woulfe’s trial, Navarro-Torres had always been willing to testify. But when the trial date neared in early 2022, Navarro-Torres was in an Immigrations Customs and Enforcement detention facility in New Mexico waiting out deportation proceedings after serving a 40-month sentence for a drug case. The lawsuit says Navarro-Torres, who lives in Calumet City, has been a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. since he entered the country with his parents at age 8.
Will County Sgt. Paul Rojek and Deputy Steven Adent negotiated Navarro-Torres’ transfer from ICE custody to the Will County Jail two months before trial, including arrangements to return Navarro-Torres to ICE after he testified. The two officers flew with a hand-cuffed Navarro-Torres from New Mexico to Illinois, the lawsuit states.
State law bars local authorities from any role in enforcing federal immigration law, as well as jailing witnesses who haven’t been charged with any crime, the lawsuit states. Before pulling Navarro-Torres out of the ICE detention center, Rojek corresponded with ICE agents and noted in one email that he was concerned about state sanctuary laws.
“In the past, I worked with (an assistant State’s Attorney) on an ICE transfer,” Rojek wrote in an email to ICE personnel. “This was a couple of years ago though, and more sanctuary nonsense laws have passed.”
Prosecutors had Navarro-Torres held in jail on a $1 million bond as a “material witness,” four times the bond set for Woulfe. State law only allows a witness to be jailed if they have refused to testify or if they are coming from an out-of-state “penal institution.” The lawsuit notes the New Mexico facility where Navarro-Torres was held was run by a private company and that immigration matters are civil, not criminal, proceedings.
Navarro-Torres spent two weeks in quarantine after arriving at the jail in January 2022. When he was moved into general population, Navarro-Torres asked a guard why he was being detained and was slammed to the ground by a team of officers and thrown into solitary confinement for five days, the lawsuit states.
As the trial neared and immigration activists and community groups led a series of rallies to publicize Navarro-Torres’ plight, Will County prosecutors brokered a deal for Navarro-Torres to drop an emergency motion seeking his release in exchange for certifying Navarro-Torres for a U visa. U visas are granted to crime victims or individuals who are “helpful” with investigations or prosecutions of criminal activity. Attorney General Kwame Raoul had threatened a lawsuit against Will County for violating state law by cooperating with ICE but an agreed settlement with the county was never signed by State’s Attorney James Glasgow.
Navarro-Torres was released the day he testified, the same day Raoul’s office entered an agreement. Woulfe’s trial ended with a mistrial after jurors deadlocked. Woulfe would eventually plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Navarro-Torres’ lawsuit states that he suffered “severe mental and physical trauma” from his detention and seeks damages. A spokeswoman for the Will County state’s attorney, whose office typically represents county agencies in litigation, declined comment Thursday, citing the pending lawsuit.
