As deportation officers continue to zero in on Chicago and Republican officials gear up for investigations into the mayor, moderate aldermen are bemoaning city leadership’s reluctance to wind back its strict sanctuary policy.
The Trump administration is executing large-scale immigration enforcement operations across the United States and making Chicago a top target, in large part because of the city’s laws restricting cooperation between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Border czar Tom Homan has argued that localities that work with ICE agents make it easier to focus on criminal migrants, as agents are not forced to make apprehensions throughout the community at large.
Despite pressure from the White House and national surveys indicating the majority of Americans support enforcement of immigration laws, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has defiantly stood by the city’s sanctuary law. Some of the few moderate members of the Chicago City Council have become frustrated over the matter.
“The liberals control everything,” Chicago Alderman Nicholas Sposato said to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “So if they want to remain a sanctuary city and protect criminals over law-abiding citizens in our community then I guess that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Sposato was one of only 11 aldermen in January who voted in favor of a proposed amendment to the Welcoming City Ordinance (WCO), which prohibits any cooperation between Chicago authorities and ICE agents. The amendment called for cooperation in circumstances when the wanted illegal migrant has been involved in serious criminal activity.
That proposal was smacked down by the city council’s liberal majority in a 39-11 vote. Alderman Raymond Lopez, who proposed the amendment along with another Democrat, ripped the decision to stand by the current policy.
“It shouldn’t take an act of Congress or city council, for that matter, to say we’re not going to protect child sexual predators and human traffickers, but yet, that’s exactly what the City Council did when it rejected the amendment that would allow for our police officers to work with our federal partners when someone is arrested or convicted of four very specific violent and dangerous criminal crime categories,” Lopez said to the DCNF.
Those four categories include illegal migrants arrested or convicted of sexual crimes against minors, gang-related activities, drug-related activities or prostitution-related activities.
“My colleagues have said, ‘if ICE wants them, ICE can go get them in the neighborhoods themselves. We’re not going to help,’” Lopez continued. “Well, who does that really help?”
The Windy City has been hit particularly hard by the border crisis that began under the Biden administration. More than 51,000 migrants have flocked to Chicago since August 2022, requiring housing, food and other accommodations. Local taxpayers have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
In the days leading up to the amendment vote, Lopez argued that allowing ICE agents to pick up criminal illegal migrants at Chicago jail detention facilities would help otherwise law-abiding illegal migrants in the city, as it kept deportation officers from making arrests out in the community. This is a point Homan has repeatedly made, having previously told the DCNF that he is focusing on the “worst first,” but cautioned that deportation officers won’t hesitate to arrest any other illegal migrant during a raid if they happen to come across one.
Johnson’s office reportedly distributed a memo to members of the City Council ahead of the vote, telling aldermen that the proposal would lead to over-policing of black and brown communities.
President Donald Trump has so far followed through on campaign pledges to executive an ambitious immigration enforcement agenda, having immediately declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and deploying troops to help Border Patrol’s mission in stemming unlawful crossings. The administration has also ramped up ICE enforcement actions incredibly.
ICE daily arrests have repeatedly exceeded 1,000, according to the memos published by the agency. To put this figure into perspective, the daily ICE arrests under the Biden administration averaged to roughly 310 in fiscal year 2024.
As federal immigration authorities carry on with their mission, the administration has taken particular interest in Chicago.
During an ICE raid in Chicago earlier in January, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was reportedly on the ground and monitoring the action, watching for any possible interference by city officials. Bove’s presence at the raid follows the Justice Department’s creation of a task force dedicated to investigating sanctuary jurisdictions and waging a lawsuit against any locality that is deemed to be in defiance of federal law.
Additionally, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee delivered a letter to Johnson announcing an investigation into his city’s sanctuary policies. The letter — which was also delivered to three other mayors — asked Johnson to hand over pertinent internal documentation and communication and requested he testify before the committee in February.
“Chicago is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, and we continue to maintain that place with all of the pointless, endless political bluster coming out of the mouths of Brandon Johnson and his hyper liberal, socialist enablers,” Lopez, a Democrat, said to the DCNF.
Lopez, who himself has Mexican roots, said the immigrant community wants to see criminal illegal migrants be removed, arguing that they hurt their community’s image.
“Even undocumented individuals want the criminals deported or expelled, because it taints them as well,” he said. “It stains their existence here by being lumped into one category with those folks.”
“I think that is what helped fuel the anger within the Latino community, specifically the Mexican American voting block, because they saw that as a slap in the face to all of their trials and tribulations, especially those that know or have relatives or friends who are still struggling for a path and were completely forgotten by the Democratic Party in order to make way for the migrant asylum seekers,” he said.
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