Chicago City Wire

There is little legal recourse for sanctuary jurisdictions to prevent President-elect Donald Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, from sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in to capture and deport illegal aliens, Don Rosenberg, president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC), told Chicago City Wire.

But Rosenberg did say that Chicago and Illinois, both sanctuary jurisdictions, will make the job more difficult for ICE to detain Homan's top priority illegals—those who are a threat to public safety and national security.

“Sanctuary states don’t participate in [ICE program] 287 (g) where local and state governments allow agents to be stationed in their prisons to pick up illegals convicted of a crime as soon as they serve out their sentences,” he said. “Without that cooperation agents have to spend a lot more time and money to find them and deport them.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, recently said he will do all he can do protect illegals from ICE.

"I am going to do everything that I can to protect our undocumented immigrants. They are residents of our state," Pritzker recently told MSNBC. "And I also, obviously, need to make sure that whatever they are doing in our state, the federal government, that it is actually within federal law or state law for them to do it."

But he added that "we cannot prohibit them, federal law enforcement, from coming into our state to, you know, conduct raids or do anything else like that. Meanwhile, I think it would be very difficult for them to just spread out across the country. They don’t have enough manpower within the Department of Homeland Security in order to carry that out."

Recently, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson faced a public outcry for prioritizing illegals over the city's own citizens.

Prior to a November 14 City Council 50-0 vote against Johnson’s proposed $300 million property tax increase, one speaker who registered in as Mrs. Lawrence, blasted the tax hike proposal.

“What about our real estate?" she said. "Because, see, we paid for these properties for a purpose and not for you to go touching it with $300 million that you want to syphon out of the citizens’ pockets. Get rid of the illegals. And that will take your money right back. Start it off with that."

According to a March Illinois Policy Institute report, Chicago has spent $299 million on housing, food and medical care for illegals since 2022, and that includes $215 million since Johnson took office in May 2023.

Nearly 37,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August 2022. As of March 14, more than 11,200 migrants were living in shelters, the report said.

Under the Biden Administration, nearly 8 million illegals have entered the country. One, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was convicted on November 20 of the February 22 murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a University of Augusta nursing student, studying on the University of Georgia campus in Athens.

For his part, Rosenberg, who lost his son, Drew, to an illegal driving without a valid license, would like to see all illegals deported but acknowledges it would take a massive effort, which would be made easier if all state and local governments cooperated.

“It’s one thing to say you won’t cooperate but it’s another to say you will try to protect criminals from the authorities,” he said. “That’s a felony.”