FEBRUARY 6, 2025

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is suing Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, arguing their Democratic-controlled layers of government are interfering with federal immigration enforcement as the White House pursues a mass deportation campaign.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago, claims sanctuary policies that bar local authorities from cooperating with the deportation effort are “exacerbating” a crisis at the U.S. Southern border.

Pritzker, Johnson and Preckwinkle have vowed to uphold the state and city’s sanctuary laws, meaning local authorities won’t assist federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement in tracking down immigrants without legal status.

The Justice Department claims Illinois leaders have been “minimally enforcing — and oftentimes affirmatively thwarting” federal investigations, resulting in “countless criminals being released into Chicago who should have been held for immigration removal from the United States.” They want a court order barring state and local protections for immigrants.

“This national crisis underscores the vital importance of '[e]nforcing our Nation’s immigration laws,’” the suit states. “This action seeks to put an end to one State’s efforts to impede the Federal Government from doing that.”

Immigrants without legal status have not accounted for a disproportionate number of crimes compared to the rest of the population, numerous studies have shown.

The Trump administration argues state law and ordinances at the county and city level “are designed to and in fact interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”

‘Illinois will defend our laws’

Pritzker said the state’s TRUST Act, the 2017 law which prohibits local police from assisting with immigration enforcement, “has always been compliant with federal law and still is today.”

“Unlike Donald Trump, Illinois follows the law,” Pritzker said in a statement. “Illinois will defend our laws that prioritize police resources for fighting crime while enabling state law enforcement to assist with arresting violent criminals. Instead of working with us to support law enforcement, the Trump Administration is making it more difficult to protect the public, just like they did when Trump pardoned the convicted January 6 violent criminals. We look forward to seeing them in court.”

As the city’s Law Department reviewed the suit, Johnson said “Chicago is and will remain a welcoming city, with welcoming people who work beside their neighbors to build strong communities where you can still raise a family.”

“The safety and security of Chicago residents remains the priority for the Johnson Administration,” the mayor said in a statement. “Chicago will continue to protect the working people of our city and defend against attacks on our longstanding values. Chicago will stay focused on our priorities.”

Preckwinkle said “Cook County remains committed to being a fair and welcoming community for all residents. Our policies reflect our longstanding values and ensure that local resources are used to promote public safety and community trust. We will review the complaint and respond accordingly.”

The lawsuit also named Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart as defendants. CPD officials declined to comment.

Dart’s office said it “does not pass or enact legislation regarding immigration” and “it has long been our practice to work with all federal agents who provide arrest warrants authorizing them to take custody of individuals being detained at the Cook County Jail.”

City Council reaction: ‘What we are doing isn’t obstructing’

Trump, who has long used Chicago as a political piñata and denigrated the city as crime-infested and “embarrassing to us as a nation,” tried to withhold federal law enforcement funding from Chicago during his first term as president. That effort was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Justice Department officials signaled soon after Trump’s inauguration last month that they would go after state and local governments thought to be undermining federal immigration laws.

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said Trump’s suit was “not surprising.”

“To have the Department of Justice do this tracks with how they want to disrupt and be chaotic. It’s something we all should have been anticipating — and some of us did,” Vasquez said. “Trump’s going to weaponize the federal government by any means that he can.”

“I believe that what we are doing isn’t obstructing anything because we’re not blocking anyone from doing anything,” Vasquez said. “The fact that we’re not interacting isn’t the same thing as blocking.”

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) branded the lawsuit a “federal overreach and a waste of federal government resources.”

“While Trump and his administration may disagree with our sanctuary city policies, we are protected by the 10th Amendment, and as a state and local government, have the ability to determine our own policies that are in the best interest of our communities,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

Calls to cooperate

It’s been 40 years since Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order declaring Chicago a “sanctuary city,” meaning undocumented people can access city services and live without fear of police harassment or city cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Last month, after a furious lobbying campaign by immigration rights advocates and their political champions, the City Council, without debate, voted 39-11 to table an attempt by two Hispanic alderpersons to restore exceptions to the city’s Welcoming City ordinance.

The failed ordinance was led by Southwest Side colleagues Ray Lopez (15th) and Silvana Tabares (23rd), two of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s most outspoken critics. Those exceptions had been eliminated during former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.

On Thursday, Lopez blamed what he called the “inflammatory and challenging rhetoric” from Johnson “and his radical allies” for the legal actions taken by the Trump administration.

“Chicago is experiencing the initial onslaught from the Trump Administration due to Johnson’s unwavering refusal to permit common-sense changes to our Welcoming City Ordinance,” Lopez said in a statement. “Brandon Johnson’s continued political defiance will continue to threaten long-term undocumented residents as their numbers grow in collateral capture arrests.”

Illinois Republicans called on Democrats who control all levers of power in Springfield to repeal the TRUST Act.

“By continuing to obstruct federal immigration authorities from apprehending dangerous criminals being harbored in Illinois illegally, Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Johnson are putting both law enforcement and Illinoisans at risk,” Illinois Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said in a statement.

Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison — the County Board’s sole GOP member — called the Justice Department suit “a stark reminder of the serious consequences of noncooperation.”

“By aligning our policies with federal efforts, we can ensure that those who break our laws are held accountable and removed from our communities,” Morrison said in a statement.

Suit’s discrimination claim ‘dictionary definition of baseless’

Ed Yohnka, communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, dismissed the suit as “little more than the continuation of the name-calling and threats” delivered by Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan.

“The Constitution permits state and local government to determine local priorities without interference from the federal government. The president and his allies cannot ignore this reality in their zeal to carry out a cruel and troubling mass deportation program,” Yohnka said.

The new suit was met with skepticism from Ron Safer, who represented the city in the 2017 lawsuit that led a federal judge to rule that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions exceeded his authority when he required cities to notify immigration agents when people who are in the country illegally are about to be released from jail.

“In this case, there is no state law that harms federal law enforcement of immigration law. There’s no state or city ordinance that stops law enforcement from enforcing the law. What it says is, when Chicago police officers or Cook County sheriffs come in contact with immigrants, who may or may not be undocumented, they do not inquire into their immigration status. That’s all,” Safer said.

The Trump administration’s 2017 case was rejected by a conservative Republican judge at the district court level and eventually was turned down by Supreme Court justices. The new suit is assigned to U.S. District Judge Lindsay Jenkins, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Safer waved off the Trump administration’s claim of discrimination against the federal government as “probably under the dictionary definition of baseless” — but he said he’s not sure how things might play out if the case advances to the 6-3 conservative majority high court this time around.

Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, who specializes in the interaction between the federal government and local entities in criminal enforcement, said this Supreme Court “has been quite forceful” on “the principle that the federal government can’t force states to actively collaborate in the enforcement of federal statutes.”

“There is a long history of the federal government trying to force state and local authorities to do their bidding. Not only does the anti-commandeering principle of constitutional law argue against that, but so does politics every time the federal government has tried to impose its will upon state and local authorities,” Richman said. “Whether you’re talking about Prohibition or the Fugitive Slave Act, or — sad to say — Reconstruction, it has failed.”

The arguments in the lawsuit and the fact that the Justice Department singled out Illinois, Cook County and Chicago among all the states and municipalities with similar “sanctuary” laws made Nicole Hallett, the director of the Immigration Clinic at Northwestern University’s law school, think that the case is more about messaging than enforcing the law.

“It could be that the Illinois and Chicago laws are among the broadest such laws in the country. The other reason is just that many people have made Chicago into an example of what they think is wrong with how states are handling immigration enforcement, and Illinois is Public Enemy No. 1, so why not start here?” Hallett said. “There is a lot of precedent that the federal government cannot coerce states into doing what it wants. The complaint seems to be that [Illinois] is not helping enforce immigration laws. Well, guess what? The courts have said they don’t have to.”

Contributing: Andy Grimm, Jon Seidel and Tessa Weinberg, WBEZ

Read the full lawsuit here