Less than a week after Donald Trump’s election—and in the face of his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised that Chicago would remain a “sanctuary city,” one that doesn’t prosecute or target people solely on the basis of their immigration status.
The law’s exceptions can be broken down into four different categories: An undocumented immigrant can be detained and then turned over to ICE if he or she has a criminal warrant, a prior felony conviction, a pending felony prosecution, or are in a gang database. In those cases CPD can arrest or detain someone “based solely on the belief that the person is not present legally in the United States,” as the law states, can grant ICE access to this person, and can communicate a person’s custody status or release date with ICE.
“Someone with a [criminal] warrant can be picked up by the local police already,” says Tania Unzueta, a policy director for Mijente, a national organization involved in sanctuary city work and a coordinator with Chicago’s Immigrant Policy Working Group. “There’s no need to add immigrant enforcement for safety.” As far as someone who has a pending felony prosecution, “if the court thought that they were dangerous, they wouldn’t be out on bail,” Unzueta says. Unzueta is herself an undocumented immigrant with a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) permit that allows her to stay and work in the country.
Huynh’s organization has heard similarly from community members that “an officer will look at what they’re wearing and say, ‘You’re in a gang because you’re wearing red.'”
“Even though our welcoming ordinance has been on the books for ten years in one form or another,” Tsao adds, “ICE has continued to operate and will continue to operate, and there’s not a whole lot that the city can do about that.”
