Chicago City Wire

Chicago resident Brian McCann is speaking out more than a decade after his brother was killed by a man living in the country illegally, saying Cook County’s sanctuary policies allowed the suspect to flee before trial and contributed to delays in justice.

In a report on immigration enforcement in Chicago, McCann described how the 2011 death of his brother, William “Denny” McCann, intersected with local policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. 

McCann said sanctuary city policies directly contributed to the suspect’s ability to leave the country after being released on bail.

Brian McCann | Prairie State Wire

On June 8, 2011, Denny McCann, 66, an insurance agent, was hit and dragged for a block and a half in Logan Square by a car driven by Saul Chavez, a Mexican national in the country illegally. Chavez’s blood alcohol content was 0.29%. The legal limit is 0.08%. Chavez had also previously completed a two-year probationary period for a prior DUI conviction.

“My brother died a violent death,” McCann told R2 Media for its report, Inside Trump’s ICE Crackdown in Chicago: Is Sanctuary a Myth.

“A month after he’s in prison, Cook County adopts a sanctuary policy that lets him make bail,” McCann continued. “So he gets out and disappears into Mexico. My anger is still directed at the political system more than the young man.”

In December 2022, Chavez was extradited to the United States, convicted of reckless homicide and aggravated DUI, and sentenced to six to 12 years in prison.

The Chicago City Council approved the city’s sanctuary law, the Welcoming Ordinance, in 2012. The Illinois General Assembly passed the statewide TRUST Act in 2017. Both laws prohibit law enforcement agencies from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in enforcing federal immigration laws. 

For example, municipal, county and state officials are not permitted to notify ICE when a person in the country illegally is released from custody.

“By playing this catch and release and taunting the federal government to go find them in the neighborhoods you created a population that has been taken as collateral captures,” Ald. Ray Lopez, 15th Ward, told R2 Media. “Nearly 50 percent of those that have been taken from the city of Chicago by ICE since Trump took over are collateral captures — not the folks they were looking for but the folks who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In 2017, McCann and California resident Don Rosenberg, along with three others, founded Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime.

In 2010, Rosenberg’s 25-year-old son, Drew, was killed in San Francisco by a Honduran national driving without a license.

Rosenberg told Chicago City Wire that some officials support sanctuary policies because they believe such measures make communities safer by encouraging undocumented immigrants to report crimes. He disagreed with that claim.

“I’ve never heard of one instance where someone here illegally has been deported after reporting a crime,” he said. “The police just don’t ask your citizenship status. Besides, you can always report a crime anonymously. It’s the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild who have convinced them to fear reporting a crime.”