Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) said he’s planning to protect illegal immigrants living in his state from being deported by federal authorities.
“I’m going to do everything that I can to protect our undocumented,” Pritzker said to MSNBC host Joy Reid. “They’re residents of our state, and I also obviously need to make sure that whatever they’re [the federal government] doing in our state that it is actually within federal law or state law for them to do it there.”
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President-elect Donald Trump vowed that beginning on his first day in office, he would mobilize federal and state law enforcement officers to deport illegal immigrants.
Trump said he plans to deport between 15 million and 20 million people as part of his “mass deportation plan.”
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“They’re talking about rounding up people who are law-abiding undocumented immigrants in this country, many of whom are working, paying taxes, not getting any benefits for those taxes, I might add,” Pritzker said. “And we have a law on the books in the state of Illinois called the TRUST Act, which prohibits our local law enforcement and sheriffs and the like from coordinating with the federal authorities.”
Since 2022, Illinois taxpayers have spent $2.84 billion to cover costs for undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers living in the state.
Chicago has become a hot spot for the migrant crisis after Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) sent nearly 40,000 migrants to the city in the past two years. It’s created a humanitarian crisis as the city struggles to shelter, feed, and provide medical care for the migrants.
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While Pritzker may be rallying behind the migrants living in Illinois now, he’s said it’s “not fair” that Texas is sending migrants to Illinois.
“There are plenty of other cities where, if he’s gonna send people, they could be sent — but no, he’s choosing only Democrat states, Democrat cities,” Pritzker said in January.