Mayor Brandon Johnson declared Tuesday that Chicagoans “have to go as far as necessary” to “protect our Constitution” as the Trump administration sets its sight on the city as a target for militarized immigration enforcement.
Chicago officials confirmed last week they’re bracing to be one of five cities where President Donald Trump sends tactical teams, equipped with “mini tanks” to carry out raids at immigration courts and elsewhere. An unnamed Trump administration official quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine said Monday “Chicago is next, if they go too far.”
“Whatever is necessary. … We should all be committed to doing just that,” Johnson said in response to the remark at a City Hall news conference. “Whether it’s in the courts, whether it’s in the streets or with policy, we’re going to continue to defend and stand up for working people.”
Johnson’s repeated, forceful rebuke of the president comes as his team continues to figure out how to fight back in the face of potential military presence.
And it comes as he takes heat after the revelation that his own police department has routinely shared personal information of arrestees at the request of federal immigration officials, despite laws aimed at prohibiting such information-sharing.
So far, Johnson’s resistance to aggressive deportation raids has meant supporting California’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over the federal deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, a power the plaintiffs argued is reserved for governors and violates the Constitution.
The city of Chicago’s Law Department also declined to turn over records of those who’ve applied for the CityKey program, a government ID used by undocumented Chicagoans.
And the city is restarting its “Know Your Rights” publicity campaign on trains and buses, Johnson said Tuesday, which directs riders to online resources about what to do in the face of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
As Johnson’s team scrambles to find ways to protect undocumented immigrants from Trump’s aggressive and allegedly deceptive deportation stings, officials have yet to give a clear explanation for why the Chicago Police Department has routinely provided personal information of arrestees when requested by ICE and other federal immigration enforcement agencies, as the Sun-Times reported Friday.
Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance dictates that police are only supposed to share information with ICE when “required to do so by statute, federal regulation, court order, or a lawfully issued judicial warrant.”
Absent that, officers are not supposed to “expend their time responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE regarding a person’s custody status, release date or contact information.”
Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry appeared to imply the city was required to share the information — including names, dates of birth and countries of origin of arrestees — due to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, that Chicago is subject to. That is the mechanism ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Customs and Border Patrol used to request the information.
“This actually may be an opportunity for us to revisit the laws and see where there might be an opportunity to contract the parameters of FOIA so that nation of origin, for instance, would not be information that is subject to release,” Richardson-Lowry said at Tuesday news conference. “But in terms of the specifics, I won’t get into those details because we are reviewing those with CPD.”
Richardson-Lowry declined to say whether the police department should be redeacting that personal information from arrest records before sending it to federal agents. Johnson declined to comment on the issue entirely, referring only to Richardson-Lowry.
The police department’s document-sharing revelation has caused consternation among several Chicago alderpersons, who both praised the mayor for his efforts but pushed him to address the opacity of the police department’s communications with ICE more urgently.
“The mayor should be on top of this,” said 22nd Ward Ald. Mike Rodriguez. “I would hope the mayor knows exactly what happened at this point and is able to communicate that at the right time, and that’s ASAP.”
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, of the 25th Ward, urged the mayor to call for an investigation.
Outside of police department record-sharing, Sigcho-Lopez said the city should take more proactive steps to brace for aggressive raids. For instance, the mayor should deploy local police to schools, libraries and other public buildings, he said, as a line of defense against ICE agents attempting to gain access without a warrant.
In Los Angeles, school police set up a “safety perimeter” around campuses to keep federal immigration agents out, the L.A. Times reported. That’s after Trump reversed a Biden administration policy that largely exempted schools and churches from immigration enforcement.
“That is within our rights to keep children safe from abductions, just as L.A. has done,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We should be proactive and expect the Trump administration to escalate violence.”
Sigcho-Lopez plans to raise this idea and concerns over record-sharing at a forthcoming committee hearing led by 40th Ward Ald. Andre Vasquez, chair of the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, meant to probe police department involvement with immigration enforcement.
That hearing, yet to be scheduled, was called in response to the police department’s June 4 presence at a raid where people were arrested amid routine immigration checkups in a South Loop office.
Johnson has said he’s reviewing the police department’s role but has also defended the department, saying it’s its job to keep streets safe amid protests, which is why officers were at the scene.
Meanwhile, immigrants across Chicago have had to grapple with their own choices about how to protect themselves from deportation.
Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said the tactic of detaining immigrants at work, or at their immigration check-in appointments, has led to an impossible choice for those wracked with fear of being detained in the course of their daily lives.
The city “can’t tell people not to be afraid” but “what we can do is give people information,” Ponce de León said.
“Our families have to think about who will take care of their children if someone is detained, about maybe giving guardianship to someone they trust, filing, keeping their important documents in a safe place, and even giving power of attorney for their financial responsibilities to someone. So in this moment … we don’t know what might come.”
Ponce de Leon directed families to Illinoisimmigrationinfo.org, which has resources to help people prepare for worst-case scenarios.