Chicago City Wire

New research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shows that there are close to 8 million illegal immigrants in sanctuary states. With a whopping 530,000, Illinois - a sanctuary state - comes in fifth on that list.

State and local governments with sanctuary laws will present an extra hurdle for incoming border czar Tom Homan to deport those in the country illegally, says CIS’s Jason Richwine.

“When President Trump begins his efforts to deport illegal immigrants in January, he will need to overcome ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ that do not fully cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Richwine wrote in an article posed on CIS’s website. 

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker | illinois.gov

“As my colleague Jessica Vaughan explains, sanctuary jurisdictions are state or local governments that frustrate enforcement by 'refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.’”

Other sanctuary jurisdictions include the District of Columbia and three states, Maryland, New Mexico and Virginia, which are considered sanctuary states since they have a high number of local sanctuary jurisdictions.

All together, CIS estimates that 56.3 percent of illegals reside in sanctuary states and cities. California, a long time haven for illegals, leads the list with more than 3 million.

Illegals have not only become a drain on government resources, especially in Chicago, but some pose a criminal threat to communities, and even threaten national security.

One expert on the Venezuelan gang TdA recently predicted that the gang would expand its criminal operations with targeted assassinations.

Jose Gustavo Arocha, a senior fellow for the Center for a Secure Free Society and former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army, told Fox News Digital that the group is already behind assassinations in Venezuela and in other parts of Latin America.

“That’s what will happen here in the U.S.,” he warns.

Arocha also urged the incoming Trump administration to act quickly against the gang.

According to Arocha, who fled the country after being imprisoned by socialist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro for eight months, TdA is a “state-sponsored, Maduro regime organization,” formed and trained by the Venezuelan government to sow chaos, violence and discord throughout the Western hemisphere.

Jessica Vaughan, Director of policy studies at CIS, told Fox News Digital that the TdA assassinations in the U.S. have already begun.

She pointed to the case of TdA member Yurwin Salazar who she said beat, tortured and killed a former Venezuelan police officer named Jose Luis Sanchez Valera in Miami in November 2023. In addition to the murder, Salazar also stole the former police officer’s life savings.

Agreeing with Arocha, Vaughan said that sanctuary policies are especially harmful to efforts to combat TdA.

"The sanctuary policies have to go," she said. "It's critical that these local law enforcement agencies are able to share information with ICE and vice versa."

For his part, Homan recently delivered a blunt challenge regarding deportations to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson – both have vowed to protect their illegal populations from the incoming administration's plans to deport them.

NBC 5 Chicago reported, however, that Homan said Pritzker and Johnson will cooperate with the new administration’s efforts or  face the consequences.

“The mayor of Chicago, not a real bright guy, says Tom Homan isn’t welcome in Chicago,” NBC reported Homan as saying during a weekend conference in Phoenix. “Well guess where Tom Homan’s going to be day one? Chicago, Illinois. You don’t want me to be there? Come get me.”