An attorney for informed a McHenry County judge that his client could not appear in court on a local case because he had been detained by Homeland Security and was in a Texas detention center.

Jose Luis Cortes-Luna, 44, who has addresses listed in Crystal Lake and Rolling Meadows, is charged in McHenry County court with grooming and aggravated sexual abuse of a child, according to a criminal complaint.

He is accused of sexually abusing a child in 2023 and 2024 and with grooming based on an allegation that he made a ”pinky promise" with the child that she would not tell her mother, according to the criminal complaint.

In October, Cortes-Luna waived his right to a jury trial. But his attorney, Stavri Vako, said that because Cortes-Luna was recently taken into custody by Homeland Security, Vako filed a motion to withdraw the waiver.

Vako said he doesn’t want proceedings against his client to continue without him present. Vako asked the state’s attorney’s office to file a writ requesting Cortes-Luna be present at a hearing set for Dec. 10, whether in person or via zoom.

Assistant State’s Attorney Justin Neubauer said Cortes-Luna’s ankle monitor “timed out” and his last known location was in Chicago. Neubauer said he checked the Homeland Security website and found that Cortes-Luna was in custody at a facility in El Paso, Texas.

Vako said Cortes-Luna is employed and has a wife and daughter living in Rolling Meadows, and his wife is “devastated.”

An ICE spokesperson said in an email Tuesday that Cortes-Luna, (spelled Cortez-Luna by ICE), is originally from Mexico. He “illegally entered” the country “near El Paso, Texas, after paying a smuggler $2,500″ and has been in the country illegally more than 20 years, the spokesperson said.

He was arrested Nov. 9 “without incident” by ICE officers at Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Cortes-Luna has a criminal history that includes DUI and felony aggravated sexual assault, the spokesperson said.

Vako said he’s met with an immigration lawyer who is trying to file a motion for bond in an effort to have Cortes-Luna released from ICE so he can deal with the pending McHenry County case. But, Vako said: “The feds don’t care about the state courts.”

In April, another of Vako’s clients, Boguslaw S. Matlak, of Schaumburg, was taken into custody by ICE agents. He was taken from the McHenry County courthouse parking lot “immediately following his court appearance,” according to a motion Matlak wrote pro se explaining to the court why he is unable to attend his court proceedings.

Matlak is charged in three separate cases with retail theft, court records show.

In June, he was “involuntarily deported” to his home country of Poland, according to the motion. Vako said, Matlak has since been attending his court hearings from Poland via Zoom.

On Nov. 5, Alex Ordonez, 33, of Elgin, was arrested by ICE agents in the courthouse parking lot. He had just walked out of the courthouse after appearing before a judge on charges of possession of stolen or fraudulently obtained checks and forgery, Class 3 felonies, according to an indictment.

Masked agents were witnessed yelling at Ordonez to exit the driver’s side of his vehicle. When he did not, agents smashed the window, removed him from the vehicle and took him in to custody, witnesses said.

House Bill 1312, waiting to be signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, would make Matlak’s and Ordonez’s arrests, and others from inside all Illinois courthouses and surrounding property by Homeland Security agents, illegal. It also could open up those agents to civil lawsuits and fines, according to House Bill 1312.