The Department of Justice sued Illinois and Chicago on Thursday, challenging their so-called “sanctuary laws” that conflict with the Trump administration’s ongoing mass deportation operation targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records.
The federal lawsuit accuses city, county, and state authorities of “minimally enforcing—and oftentimes affirmatively thwarting” federal immigration law for several years. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and other local officials are listed as defendants.
The sanctuary city laws in question, the lawsuit states, “reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe.”
The DOJ cites the Way Forward Act, TRUST Act, Welcoming City Act, and a Cook County ordinance as the provisions it seeks to challenge.
The legal challenge comes one day after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive to limit funding to sanctuary cities, including Chicago. The order marked one of Bondi’s first actions as the new DOJ head after she was confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate on Tuesday.
In response to the lawsuit, Pritzker indicated his office will challenge it in court.
“Unlike Donald Trump, Illinois follows the law. The bipartisan Illinois TRUST Act, signed into law by a Republican governor, has always been compliant with federal law and still is today,” 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.”
The Democratic governor’s strongly worded statement differs from his recent response that suggested he would comply with immigration enforcement when it came to arresting and deporting illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes.
“Well, let me start by being clear that when we’re talking about violent criminals who’ve been convicted and who are undocumented, we don’t want them in our state,” Pritzker told CNN last week. “We want them out of the country. We hope they do get deported. And if that’s who they’re picking up, we’re all for it.”
Johnson similarly supported immigration authorities’s efforts to detain and deport violent illegal aliens but still remains opposed to helping federal agents with such efforts.
“There’s a federal law that clearly states if you are undocumented and you are convicted of a crime, you are subject to deportation. That’s the law. I fully expect the federal government to uphold that law,” Johnson previously said. “Being a welcoming city just simply states that our local police department will not behave as federal agents. There’s a clear separation of powers there.”
Johnson is one of four Democratic mayors expected to testify on sanctuary cities before the House Oversight Committee next month. The mayors of Chicago, Boston, Denver, and New York City have all confirmed they will attend the public hearing scheduled for March 5.
Thursday’s lawsuit is consistent with President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order that declared a national emergency at the southern border following four years of record immigration numbers under the previous administration.
Border czar Tom Homan, who led U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 17 months during Trump’s first term, is personally spearheading the mass deportation operation. About 5,700 illegal aliens have been deported in the first two weeks since Trump has been back in office, the Department of Homeland Security revealed on Tuesday.
ICE has been conducting raids in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, among various other cities. In Denver, federal officers targeted apartment buildings in search of the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, which forcefully overtook apartment complexes last year.