In the face of a Trump administration directive to investigate state and local officials who don’t toe the line on the president’s orders on immigration, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said they will stand up for law-abiding residents regardless of their legal status. That declaration comes as Illinois and other states prevailed at temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship. Illinois jumped to join with three other states to sue over Trump’s executive order to deny babies born in the U.S. to a parent without legal status citizenship.
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A federal judge on Thursday
granted an emergency motion that puts the order on hold for two weeks, based on states like Illinois facing “irreparable injury” like the loss of federal funding should it go into effect. “Plaintiff States’ residents are also irreparably harmed by depriving them of their constitutional right to citizenship and all associated rights and benefits, including: subjecting them to risk of deportation and family separation,” the order from U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour reads. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement he was pleased that in court Coughenour called Trump’s attempt “blatantly unconstitutional.” “The right of an individual born in this country to be a citizen of this country was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution more than 150 years ago following the Civil War. No president has the authority to override the Constitution. Period,” Raoul said in a statement. “We will continue to fight to preserve our U.S. Constitution and the 14th Amendment and the laws of the state of Illinois, including the TRUST Act.” Illinois became what’s considered a sanctuary state in 2017 with the passage of the TRUST Act, a law that prohibits state and local police from detaining someone based solely on their immigration status. It also restricts state and local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. “It’s about protecting the residents of the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said Thursday, in response to reporters’ questions following an unrelated event. Pritzker went out of his way to say that there’s an exception for undocumented immigrants found guilty of violent crimes, who he said in accordance with longstanding law should not be allowed in Illinois or the U.S. Some Illinois Republicans have called for rolling back the TRUST Act. Per national media reports, the U.S. Department of Justice circulated a memo that tells U.S. attorneys throughout the country to investigate for potential prosecution cases where state and local governments don’t comply with Trump’s immigration initiatives, and that entities that decline must be disclosed to the department. Pritzker said, however, that he has had no communication from the White House about pending actions from Immigrations and Customers Enforcement (ICE) — an indication, Pritzker said, that Trump is not serious about needed comprehensive immigration reform that gives those in the country illegally a path to citizenship. Instead, Trump’s moves are “all about chaos and confusion.” “Donald Trump and his administration — (immigration czar) Tom Homan, the Department of Homeland Security — they’re the ones who are threatening people, again, who are law-abiding, who are often the anchors of their communities, who are paying taxes in this country,” Pritzker said. “They’re the ones who are threatening people. We’re just standing up for people who live in our state and in our city.” Agencies under the governor’s auspices are acting in accordance with that mindset. The Illinois State Board of Education
issued guidance to schools on what to do if ICE agents attempt a raid, and recommends that districts prepare. “ISBE firmly believes that schools should be a safe haven for all students, where students should be able to learn without fear. We can and should do everything within our power to protect our students and their right to learn while in our care,” state schools superintendent Tony Sanders said in a statement. Trump earlier this week lifted a longstanding policy that treated schools, hospitals and churches as largely off-limits to ICE. The guidance from ISBE spells out various types of potential enforcement actions ICE could take, and emphasizes that denying students equal access to learning could run afoul of the law, citing the state constitution and Plyler v. Doe, a U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to an education “even in instances when a student may be undocumented.” ISBE recommends schools establish a point person to deal with ICE if they come to the school campus, a point person for handling ICE requests for records, that schools train staff, that schools keep families’ emergency contact information updated and that schools update or adopt policies that cover steps to take in the event ICE carries out a raid at school as well as data-sharing and what to do if a student’s parent is deported. The guidance from ISBE stresses that schools should not “force” a student or family to share their immigration status, such as when figuring out students’ residency for enrollment eligibility purposes. “School districts must not inquire about the citizenship status of a student or parent in order to establish residency,” the reminder reads. “The documents required by a school system as proof of residency for a student, when taken together, shall not result in a requirement for proof of citizenship status.” Despite previous tension between Pritzker and Johnson, with the governor in a Tuesday interview with NBC-5 this week saying they hadn’t talked much about how to handle an ICE blitz, their messages were aligned during the Thursday appearance. Johnson stressed that given Chicago’s longtime sanctuary city designation, his focus on protecting city residents. “We will defend our city,” Johnson said. Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who recently returned to Chicago after serving as President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan, was also at the event in North Lawndale for the announcement of $10 million in grant funding available to small businesses. Emanuel and Pritzker slammed Trump’s actions to dismantle federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, with the governor saying tearing down DEI efforts is in actuality an attack on civil rights.
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