“States, generally speaking, are not allowed to limit what federal officers do,” DePaul University law professor David Franklin said. “The federal government, federal law definitely limit what federal officers can do.”

According to the FBI’s latest annual report, there were 8,263 hate crime incidents in the U.S. in 2020. That’s up from 7,314 in 2019 when the country experienced the highest number of hate crimes since 2008. Now the Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes is set to examine how to prevent and address hate crimes across the state.