Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to prevent Chicago police officers from working with immigration agents by eliminating “carve-outs” in the city’s Welcoming City ordinance that allowed police to cooperate with ICE in certain circumstances.
On Tuesday, the mayor will finally deliver on that promise — albeit 20 months late.
The City Council’s newly-created Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights will hold its first meeting to approve an even stronger version of the long-awaited reforms.
During the frenzied negotiations preceding the City Council’s 29-to-21 vote on her $12.8 billion budget, Lightfoot tried to use eliminating the so-called “carve-outs” as a political sweetener to win votes from the 13-member Hispanic Caucus.
When immigrants rights advocates denounced that offer as a political ploy, Lightfoot agreed to introduce a standalone ordinance in December, only to have Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) refer the ordinance to the Rules Committee, where legislation opposed by the mayor normally goes to die.
Lightfoot got around that maneuver with a direct introduction to committee, setting the stage for final approval at next week’s City Council meeting.
Chicago police officers currently are permitted to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement if targeted individuals are: in the city’s gang database; have pending felony prosecutions or prior felony convictions; or are the subject of an outstanding criminal warrant.
The mayor’s ordinance would eliminate those exceptions.
Any “agent or agency” of the city also would be forbidden to:
• Stop, arrest, detain or continue to detain a person solely on the belief that the person is not present legally in the United State or has committed a civil immigration violation.
• Transfer any person into ICE custody for the sole purpose of civil immigration enforcement.
• Set up a traffic perimeter or provide on-site support to assist a civil immigration enforcement operation.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), City Council champion of immigrants rights, said two new provisions were added to the substitute ordinance.
The most important of those changes would ensure undocumented Chicagoans who are victims of crime and assist Chicago police in their investigation receive timely certification of the paperwork they need to seek a Green Card through a federal program known as ‘U-Visa.’
“Oftentimes, this is used by victims of domestic violence. We’ve heard complaints from the legal community that it often takes too long for the Chicago Police Department to fill out the paperwork that allows them to submit the application to immigration. So, we’ve added language to make sure that there will be timely certification of those documents within 90 days,” Ramirez-Rosa said.
“The second provision is, we’ve gone through the city code and we’re removing twelve instances of the word ‘citizen’ to just make it clear that portion of the code applies to every Chicagoan, regardless of their immigration status.”
Lopez, one of the mayor’s most outspoken City Council critics, remains dead-set against eliminating the carve-outs, fearing it would tie the hands of Chicago police in cracking down on the gang-bangers and drug dealers terrorizing his community.
“There are thousands of good, undocumented people living in our neighborhoods trying to make our city better that should be welcomed and protected. However, our city should not be a sanctuary for a small group of individuals that are here without documentation and pose a serious threat to everyone’s safety,” Lopez wrote in a text message to the Sun-Times.
“The neighborhoods that I represent like Back of the Yards and Brighton Park are filled with immigrant families that want to feel safe — both from deportation, but also from being terrorized in their adoptive country.”
Lightfoot has branded Lopez’s opposition “racist” and “xeonophobic.” Ramirez-Rosa called it “misguided.”
“There are two major studies … of sanctuary city policies. And they find that sanctuary cities are safer because no one is afraid to call 911. And residents of a city feel as if they are welcome and integrated and part of the fabric of our society,” Ramirez-Rosa said.
Chicago’s days as a “sanctuary city” where undocumented people can access city services and live without fear of police harassment date back 35 years.
In 1985, then-Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order prohibiting city employees from enforcing federal immigration laws. He made the move to protest the federal government’s decision to question people seeking city services and conduct random searches of city records in an effort to find undocumented immigrants.
Four years later, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley affirmed the executive order. In 2006, the City Council turned the order into law as the immigration debate raged on in Congress.
Also on Tuesday, the committee will turn the page from the terrorizing of immigrants that characterized the Trump era by approving a resolution urging incoming President Joe Biden to “immediately enact” immigration reform. That’s already front-and-center on Biden’s ambitious agenda.
