Several local groups are suing the Trump administration over its deportation plans, saying the president is illegally targeting Chicago for being a sanctuary city.
Organized Communities Against Deportation, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and Raise the Floor Alliance filed the suit in federal court Saturday. They are seeking an injunction against President Donald Trump’s promised “mass deportation” efforts in the city.
“Immigration raids anywhere hurt entire communities,” Sheila Bedi of the Community Justice Clinic said in a statement. “In Chicago, the Trump administration isn’t just trying to unleash arbitrary immigrant enforcement. The impending raids are a brazen attempt to stomp out the sanctuary city movement and run roughshod over the First Amendment. … This lawsuit is about prohibiting the Trump administration from using law enforcement to decimate a vital social justice movement.”
The suit argues Trump’s threats to target the city’s federal funds are illegal and that Trump’s deportation efforts would inevitably violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from illegal search and seizure.
It also said the efforts also stand to terrorize the community and violate the First Amendment rights of those who have canceled Spanish church services, among other in-person gatherings, out of fear, as well as the groups’ members who fear they will be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their advocacy.
The suit cited the panic that broke out Friday afternoon after it was initially reported that ICE agents had attempted to gain entry to a Back of the Yards elementary school, though it was later clarified the agents were from the Secret Service and looking for a student unrelated to immigration.
“Plaintiffs — each on its own behalf and on behalf of its membership, wish to continue engaging in their First Amendment-protected activities to the fullest extent possible, but, as a result of defendants’ past, present, and likely future conduct, are deterred from doing so,” the suit reads.
ICE and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The suit is among a flurry of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration’s new edicts surrounding immigration — including a blitz of immigration policies about where ICE can detain people and about ending humanitarian parole programs — to fulfill his campaign promises of “mass deportations.”
Illinois was among several states that won a temporary block of Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship — which he couldn’t do through executive order alone — with a judge calling it a “blatantly unconstitutional order.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul also slammed another Trump order threatening to prosecute state officials who impede his deportation efforts. Raoul and other attorneys general — from California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Vermont — argued that Trump could not “unilaterally re-write the Constitution.”
“The president has made troubling threats to weaponize the U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecutorial authority and resources to attack public servants acting in compliance with their state laws, interfering with their ability to build trust with the communities they serve and protect,” they said.