Aldermen divided over sanctuary protections for felons

Aldermen Raymond Lopez (15th) and Silvana Tabares (23rd) sent a letter to City Clerk Ana Valencia on Jan. 7, seeking to expedite a vote on their changes to Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance. 

By a 39 to 11 vote, aldermen rejected the amendment that would have increased the city’s ability to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency with the deportation of undocumented persons who have been arrested or convicted of a felony.

Consideration of the amended ordinance has ended for the time being, according to Tabares.

“Talking to colleagues about today’s vote to block the ordinance proposal, there is much agreement and a willingness to collaborate on changes that need to be made to the city’s laws regarding undocumented immigrants who commit criminal acts in Chicago,” she said.

Tabares believes some of the public commenters who spoke at the Jan. 14 council meeting support a mass deportation event to maintain their ability to fundraise by providing information and to take action based on their ideological viewpoints.

“They want instances of families being separated because they want to use that as justification for their own existence,” Tabares said. “They profit from fear. If this wasn’t the case, immigration reform would have been passed by the Democratic party decades ago. I want to highlight that because deportations are coming to our communities and those efforts need to be focused on violent criminals.”

Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, Chapter 2-173 continues to protect the rights of undocumented persons by defining numerous types of communications limitations with the federal government and enforcement relationships between the city and the federal government.

Section 2-173-042 (2) and its part (c) contains existing language stating any agent or agency is authorized to ascertain if an enforcement matter only violates civil immigration law and that existing limitations do not apply when an agent or agency investigation determines a subject has an outstanding criminal warrant, a felony conviction decided by any competent court of jurisdiction, is a defendant in a felony criminal case with a pending criminal charge whose judgment has not been entered by any competent court of jurisdiction or has been identified as a gang member in a law enforcement agency’s database or by his own admission.

Lopez was outraged by council colleagues denying their revised ordinance, he said. 

Lopez and Tabares’ revised Welcoming City Ordinance sought inclusion of language to Section 2-173-042 allowing any agent or agency to work with federal immigration officers only about a person who has been arrested or convicted for crimes in four categories including drug and gang related crimes, prostitution, human trafficking and sex crimes involving minors.

“How can anyone … anyone in the City of Chicago, let alone aldermen, say that those are the kind of people we want to protect?” Lopez said. “I understand peoples’ fears and concerns. That is why we support keeping the Welcoming City Ordinance intact in other areas where we provide service without question. When it comes to public safety, specifically those categories, it’s common sense to say we are not going to provide sanctuary to those people.”

Lopez is concerned with Congress and Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants who do not fit into criminal categories while seeking those that have been arrested for or have been convicted of crimes.

“If we don’t turn them over they [Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan] are going to come into our neighborhoods looking for them and individuals who they are not looking for will be the collateral captures simple because the mayor and his allies chose to play a game of chicken with other peoples’ lives,” Lopez said.

Some Chicagoans indicated varying degrees of support for an exception allowing the City of Chicago coordination with ICE in “certain circumstances, like dealing with undocumented immigrants charged with serious crimes.”

69% of respondents strongly or somewhat supported an exception in a November 2024 poll conducted by Change Research and commissioned by 14 aldermen.

Despite protections defined by state and city sanctuary laws, ICE may be able to bypass them using Data Sharing Fusion Centers created after the September 2001 terrorism attacks to access data that allows information sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement, according to a November 2024 article published by Wired Magazine.

Data Fusion Centers are run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part.

ICE officers can access sanctuary cities’ local law enforcement databases including data from schools, abortion clinics, photos of suspects and regional tools such as facial recognition systems, according to the Wired story.

“The opposition [to the ordinance change] knows full well that ICE can already come into our communities looking for their priority targets,” Lopez said.

Lopez is frustrated by how both U.S. Latino citizens and long-term undocumented persons have been treated.

Latino-American citizens, born in Chicago and who have lived and worked in the city for generations, are concerned about the city’s prioritization of undocumented persons’ needs over theirs and Lopez also recognizes the city’s long-standing undocumented population, he said.

“Undocumented Mexicans who have been here for decades have been completely forgotten,” Lopez added. “The long-term undocumented received no financial support, protected status and have been forgotten by the Democratic party that promised them, numerous times, to come up with a pathway to citizenship. That frustration is real.”