Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently boasted that officials in the deep-blue state will do all they can to protect illegal immigrants from the Trump administration’s vow to deport them. But even with the help of local authorities – the state's sheriffs' association told the Cook County Record they will abide by the provisions in the state’s sanctuary law that shields illegals from federal authorities -- there is little legally the state can do to stop the deportations, according to Don Rosenberg, president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC).
Rosenberg said that the state’s sanctuary laws, the Illinois Trust Act and the Welcoming City Ordinance in Chicago, which forbid local officials from turning over illegals to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, will only make the job more difficult for the Trump administration to apprehend their priority targets – those who are a threat to public safety and national security.
“Sanctuary states don’t participate in [ICE program] 287 (g) where local and state governments allow agents to be stationed in their prisons to pick up illegals convicted of a crime as soon as they serve out their sentences,” Rosenberg said. “Without that cooperation agents have to spend a lot more time and money to find them and deport them.”
Don and Drew Rosenberg
| AVIAC
Pritzker recently told MSNBC that he is “going to do everything that I can to protect our undocumented immigrants. They are residents of our state," Pritzker said. "And I also, obviously, need to make sure that whatever they are doing in our state, the federal government, that it is actually within federal law or state law for them to do it."
But he added that "we cannot prohibit them, federal law enforcement, from coming into our state to, you know, conduct raids or do anything else like that. Meanwhile, I think it would be very difficult for them to just spread out across the country. They don’t have enough manpower within the Department of Homeland Security in order to carry that out."
Jim Kaitschuk, Ex. Director of the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, told the Record in an email that Illinois law “bars them from participating in any activities that are civil immigration related.”
“I am not aware of specific actions that are working on at this time, but we are obviously very limited based on the statutory constraints in the Illinois Trust Act and Illinois Way Forward Act,” Kaitschuk said.
When asked for a response to deportation plans by the incoming Trump administration, a spokesman for the Illinois State Police replied that “ISP cannot speculate on any potential action from the federal government.”
The threat of criminal activity, including gang activity, by illegal immigrants in Chicago continues to grow, America First Legal (AFL) said in a recently released statement.
A “second tranche of documents from the Illinois Cook County Sheriff’s Office exposing the growing threat that criminal illegal aliens, including the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and the politicians who protect them, pose to American citizens in the ‘sanctuary city’ of Chicago,” the group said.
The records obtained by AFL show that “Chicago law enforcement learned over a year ago that TdA was engaging in human trafficking, sex exploitation, drug trafficking, and retail theft rings, and employing extreme brutality — including dismemberment — to intimidate their adversaries.”
And that “on July 29, 2024, the Chicago Police Department warned its own police officers that TdA gang members had a ‘green light’ to shoot police officers in the sanctuary city of Denver, Colorado.”
Recently, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson faced a public outcry for prioritizing illegals over citizens.
Several spoke out before a Nov. 14 City Council meeting, at which the council voted 50-0 vote against Johnson’s proposed $300 million property tax increase.
One Chicago resident who addressed the council at the meeting, who registered in as Mrs. Lawrence, blasted the tax hike proposal.
“What about our real estate? Because, see, we paid for these properties for a purpose and not for you to go touching it with $300 million that you want to syphon out of the citizens’ pockets. Get rid of the illegals! And that will take your money right back. Start it off with that."
According to a March Illinois Policy Institute report, Chicago has spent $299 million on housing, food and medical care for illegals since 2022, and that includes $215 million since Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson took office in May 2023
Nearly 37,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August 2022. As of March 14, more than 11,200 migrants were living in shelters, the report said.
Under the Biden Administration, nearly 8 million illegals have entered the country. One, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was recently found guilty of the brutal February murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a University of Augusta nursing student, who was studying at the University of Georgia campus in Athens.
For his part, Rosenberg, who lost his son, Drew, to an illegal driving without a valid license, would like to see all illegal immigrants deported, but acknowledges it would take a massive effort – made easier if all state and local governments would cooperate.
“It’s one thing to say you won’t cooperate but it’s another to say you will try to protect criminals from the authorities,” he said. “That’s a felony.”