Removal of criminal illegals, not mass deportations, is the aim of federal agents in Chicago
Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson used Reverend Jessie Jackson’s Operation PUSH Martin Luther King Day luncheon to intensify their demonization of the Trump administration, focusing on immigration of all things. The irony should not be lost given the impact the state and city’s sanctuary polices have had on their ability to address the critical needs of Illinois' black residents. In sum, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that state taxpayers have paid $3.9 billion in assistance for illegal immigrants.
By now, it has become quite obvious Governor Pritzker is preparing a run for the White House while Johnson is running for his political life. The mayor has adopted the tack that resisting all things Trump could change his political fortunes during a moment when his leadership has come under fire by progressives and moderates alike.
Unfortunately, it is the state and city’s sanctuary policies and Pritzker and Johnsons’ public posturing that’s sowing chaos, confusion and causing great anxiety particularly in Chicago’s long neglected communities.
It is also becoming increasingly obvious Pritzker, Johnson and many of the mayors far-left supporters see illegal migration as the solution to the state and city’s historic population loss. Wirepoints reported that last year an influx of over 112,000 migrants allowed the state to see its first population gain in many years by nearly 68,000. The Center for Immigration Studies reports Illinois now has more than 530,000 illegal immigrants, which ranking it fifth most in the naton.
Trump's appointment of Tom Homan to lead the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts will likely lead to a return to a normal state of affairs on immigration matters. Homan’s rhetoric about enforcing the law aside, in a November 14 NewsNation article headlined "Homan Outlines Enforcement Priorities as Trump's ‘Border Czar,’" the former acting ICE director explained that immigration enforcement for the next four years will "focus on criminals and security threats rather than indiscriminate roundups."
Homan’s words should not be misinterpreted: His statements do not mean that illegal aliens here should get too comfortable. “If you're in the country illegally, you're in violation of law, so you're not off the table.” If this policy sounds familiar, it is because it is the same policy the Trump administration pursued in his first term and it is the very same policy Homan implemented during most of the time that he served in the Obama administration as Executive Associate Director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) between 2013 and 2017.
As of July 21, ICE said 662,556 people under its supervision were convicted of crimes or face criminal charges with only 15,000 in custody. This included 13,099 for homicide, 15,811 for sexual assault, 13,423 for weapons offenses, 2,663 for stolen vehicles. The biggest category was human trafficking related offenses at 77,074. This suggests a serious self-created crisis. Of Illinois' 530,000 illegal immigrants, Pritzker himself has said Trump might initially target 2,000 for deportation.
Nevertheless, Democratic leaders, far-left activists, and many in the mainstream press are ginning up fears about deportation plans Homan is promising to apply, despite the fact Homan’s policy and tactics are virtually identical to the immigration strategies wielded by both the first Trump administration and the Obama White House. Over the last four years, the Biden administration’s limited immigration enforcement regime was a clear outlier to past immigration policies. Therefore, Americans in the 2024 election were essentially voting for a return to the normal customs and conventions of immigration enforcement the country had experienced prior to Biden taking office in 2021.
Over the last four years, a burgeoning "sanctuary" movement in many Democratic cities and states across the country deliberately impeded ICE's ability to identify, apprehend, and deport many otherwise removable criminal aliens. At the same time, many sanctuary cities and states provided enormous incentives to lure migrants including shelter, housing, education, health care, legal services, etc. Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates illegal immigrants have cost Illinoisans $3.9 billion.
Note that the vast majority of ERO's arrests under Trump involved criminal aliens. For example: 66.3 percent of the 158,581 illegals ERO took into custody in 2018 had criminal convictions, and 20.7 percent had pending criminal charges. Less than 13 percent of those aliens were removed on immigration charges alone. Despite that, many in the media painted a picture of a "reckless hyper-enforcement system" under Trump that was wildly out of line with what ERO was doing.
Although Trump’s record plainly demonstrates a sensible application of immigration law, former President Biden, most Democrats, and much of the mainstream media pushed the narrative of a "reckless" and "hyper" Trump immigration enforcement campaign, contending it was "a moral failing and a national shame" for then-President Trump — at the time in his first term — to “threaten massive raids” that would break up families who have been in this country for years and target people at sensitive locations like hospitals and schools, despite Trump’s obvious continuation of Obama’s immigration policies.
After Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020, President Biden appointees issued three separate memos restricting ICE's ability to operate on that basis in the first eight months of his administration. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas coupled those restrictions with an expanded "protected areas" policy that placed many major cities "off limits" to ICE enforcement. That policy "turned countless locations across the country into safe spaces for criminal aliens", and ironically made playgrounds "sanctuaries for illegal-alien sex offenders."
The last of those memos issued by Mayorkas in late September 2021, captioned "Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law," hobbled ICE's ability to enforce the immigration laws by requiring ERO officers and ICE attorneys, who represent the government in immigration court, to consider irrelevant "mitigating factors" before investigating, apprehending, detaining, prosecuting, and removing any facially removable alien.
In Biden’s first year, ICE removals for 2021 were more than 70 percent lower than they were in the prior year, and nearly 80 percent lower than they had been in 2019. Removals were significantly lower than not only under Trump but Obama as well. Most removed by ICE ERO however were actually apprehended by Border Patrol agents, who were then handed over to ICE to deport in an act of bureaucratic bookkeeping intended to deceive the uninformed.
Expect no let-up from the Democrats and their supporters on the political left who, along with Trump haters in the mainstream media, will continue to stoke fears of mass deportations. Meanwhile, far-left mayors like Brandon Johnson with his socialist anti-American, anti-Semitic far-left supporters in the City Council and the community hope to provoke Trump into more aggressive action which will help them rally their base.
Mayor Johnson and his socialist allies in the City Council are resisting even limited cooperation targeting undocumented criminals. When Aldermen Silvana Tabares (23) and Ray Lopez (15) proposed to amend the city's Sanctuary City Ordinance that intended to simply enable Chicago Police to cooperate with ICE to go after undocumented people who have committed major crimes, the City Council overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. A sad reminder of the hostility toward enforcement of the law pervading the city’s legislative chamber, though the measure would have permitted CPD to cooperate with federal agents on illegals involved in gang activity, drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, and sex crimes involving minors, the amendment was defeated 39-11.
What Chicago’s progressives desire most is a confrontation with President Trump. By opposing this ordinance and their rhetoric, they are inviting and hoping for broader deportation. When Border Czar Tom Homan spoke in Portage Park, he specifically said failure to work with ICE to remove migrant criminals would force ICE to cast a wider net that would impact immigrants who are here unlawfully. Johnson and allies want and need that political confrontation. They want federal authorities knocking on doors and taking non-criminals into custody.
While activists and political leaders in the Chicago area are concentrating on confrontation, many in the immigrant community are very supportive of border security. Mexican American and Latino business leaders across the nation who support Trump are forming a coalition that supports prioritizing border security while advocating for bipartisan immigration reform that includes providing legal status for law-abiding "Dreamers," and long-term undocumented workers in all industries.
Will the Trump administration avoid taking the bait? Will it keep its focus on securing the borders while aggressively pursuing criminals and those who pose potential security threats for deportation, while striving once and for all to address the issue of legal status for law abiding Dreamers? Hopefully, Trump will avoid all the traps progressives intend to set for him and Homan. Equally important, it is essential the Trump administration resist pressure from some within in its own base who reject compromise, as they see anything short of mass deportations as surrender.
For Pritzker, Johnson, and his far-left supporters who see illegal migration as the solution to the state and city’s historic population exodus, they can cooperate with federal agents to remove criminals while continuing to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to attract migrants, that could have been used to address the critical needs of underserved residents. That is apparently easier than changing progressive policies that contribute to conditions causing residents to flee in the first place: High crime, high taxes, and the absence of quality school choices. Voters need to take notice.
