Chicago City Council to Consider Scaling Back Protections for Undocumented Immigrants as Trump Plans Mass Deportations


The Chicago City Council will weigh an effort to weaken Chicago’s protections for undocumented immigrants at the request of two alderpeople who have long opposed the city’s status as a self-proclaimed sanctuary city as Chicago’s immigrant communities brace for mass deportations.

The showdown over whether to amend Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance, set for Wednesday, will come less than a week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. He has promised to immediately launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Trump’s pick to serve as his “border czar,” has vowed to start that effort in Chicago. Trump has said he will instruct federal agents to conduct deportation operations at schools, churches and playgrounds and to deport all undocumented immigrants, not just those accused of criminal acts.

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That would put the thousands of undocumented immigrants who call Chicago home at risk of deportation, threatening to uproot families and decimate communities.

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) and Ald. Silvana Tabares (23rd Ward) plan to use a parliamentary maneuver to force the City Council to vote Wednesday on a proposal they first introduced in September 2023 that failed to get even a committee hearing, much less a vote.

That measure would reverse a January 2021 amendment to the Welcoming City ordinance that prohibited Chicago police officers from cooperating with federal immigration agents in all cases.

That ordinance was approved 41-8, just seven days after Trump’s first term ended. Lopez and Tabares both voted against it.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said Nov. 12 he will not allow Chicago police officers to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deport Chicagoans during the Trump administration, a pledge Johnson has reiterated.

“We will not bend or break,” Johnson said. “Our values will remain strong and firm. We will face likely hurdles in our work over the next four years but we will not be stopped and we will not go back.”

Johnson’s office is urging members of the City Council to reject the measure authored by Tabares and Lopez, telling them it could lead to “increased over-policing in Black and Brown communities,” according to a memo obtained by WTTW News.

Because the measure would allow Chicago police officers to assist federal agents deporting undocumented immigrants who have only been arrested for a crime, and not convicted, it is a violation of their constitutional right to due process, according to that memo.

It could also conflict with state law, which prohibits all Illinois law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal immigration agents.

Trump’s reelection has already prompted many undocumented immigrants to return to life in the city’s shadows, unwilling to seek help from city officials for health care or protection from the Chicago Police Department for fear of exposing themselves or their families to deportation, immigrant advocates said.

Before the city expanded protections for undocumented immigrants in 2021, officers had been allowed to assist federal immigration agents if they asked for information about individuals listed as gang members in city databases, people who have been charged or convicted of a felony or those who were wanted on a warrant issued by a judge.

The measure set for a vote on Wednesday would allow Chicago police officers to cooperate with federal immigration agents seeking to deport anyone arrested on suspicion of “gang-related activities,” “drug-related activities,” “prostitution-related activities” or “sexual crimes involving minors” or convicted of similar felony offenses.

“We believe that the best way to protect law-abiding non-citizens from the returning Trump Administration is by working with them in apprehending their priority targets: non-citizens that choose to engage in dangerous, illegal activity once they are in the United States,” Lopez said in a statement posted on X, the social media platform once known as Twitter.

Those categories of offenses are too broad and poorly defined and could lead to “arbitrary enforcement and legal challenges,” according to the memo from the mayor’s office.

It is unclear why Lopez and Tabares believe Trump would choose not to target Chicago during his promised campaign of mass deportations, even if their measure was approved by the City Council, since it would scale back protections for undocumented immigrants to the same level that existed in 2017.

One of Trump’s first acts as president in 2017 was to sign an executive order outlining a plan that was designed to cost Chicago millions of dollars if it did not repeal the Welcoming City ordinance entirely. Instead, the City Council voted to reaffirm the measure without making any changes to it.

Lawyers representing Chicago defended the city’s status as a sanctuary city in court, ultimately winning a total victory that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020.

Chicago has been a self-proclaimed sanctuary city for more than 38 years, with five mayors vowing to shield all immigrants in Chicago from federal agents, regardless of whether they are citizens, permanent residents or asylum seekers.

However, efforts to weaken or repeal Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city gained steam amid the crisis posed by the arrival of nearly 52,000 migrants in Chicago starting in 2022, many on buses paid for by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as part of a concerted effort to divide Democratic voters and boost Trump’s campaign.

In December 2023, at the peak of the crisis, the City Council voted 16-31 against even considering an effort to ask voters to weigh in during the March election on whether Chicago should remain a sanctuary city.

Efforts to care for those men, women and children — who are all in the country legally after requesting asylum after fleeing persecution and economic collapse — strained the city’s social safety net, ballooned the city’s budget shortfall and exacerbated tension between Chicago’s Black and Latino communities.

Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city does not require it to encourage immigrants to move to Chicago nor does the Welcoming City ordinance obligate officials to use taxpayer funds to care for immigrants in Chicago. The ordinance focuses on protections for undocumented immigrants, so it does not apply to any of the migrants.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]


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