WASHINGTON — The day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mayor Brandon Johnson — in DC for a mayor’s conference — and Gov. JB Pritzker — marking his 60th birthday — huddled in a phone call on Sunday morning to compare notes about the city and state responses for what may be an unprecedented rocky road ahead.
As for meeting with Trump, whose hostility to Chicago dates back to his first run for president, Johnson told the Sun-Times, “We’re going to work hard to make sure that that happens.”
Before pursuing any meeting, the first order of business for the city and state will be to deal with expected Trump deportation raids in the Chicago area.
“Very soon, we’ll begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” a triumphant Trump said at his pre-inaugural campaign-style rally at the Capital One Arena here, portraying all migrants who have flooded the U.S. as criminals, which is not true, and the top Democratic-run cities as crime-ridden.
Trump highlighted crimes committed by migrants, using those tragedies to tar everyone in the U.S. illegally. Compared to the last five years, violent crime in Chicago is down.
And though it’s not known when Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will hit Chicago — there were some reports it could be as early as Tuesday, with a report that the day was changed after word of the raids leaked out — the city and state know they could come soon after Trump retakes the Oval Office.
“There are people in our cities that are filled with anxiety and some level of trepidation,” Johnson said in remarks he delivered at a U.S. Conference of Mayors session.
Afterward, Johnson and I talked about the new Trump administration that starts at noon Monday. Trump at the rally underscored his promise to sign a multitude of executive orders within hours of returning to the White House, including, on immigration, the border, getting rid of a number of President Joe Biden’s executive orders and reinstating some that Trump put in place in his first term.
Johnson told me he would welcome a meeting with Trump and that City Hall officials would be standing by on Monday ready to analyze the executive orders Trump will sign to start to determine what they could mean for the city.
The mayor also told me he “had a great conversation with the governor this morning … about a number of things, but more specifically around holding our firm position on being a sanctuary as a state and as a city.
“Look, it’s pretty straightforward. We have an ordinance that we uphold. It’s a Welcoming City ordinance. Of course, we worked hard to make sure that that ordinance would not be compromised, and the vast majority of City Council overwhelmingly said that it is not the responsibility of local law enforcement to behave, to behave as federal agents.”
Johnson’s reference was to an unsuccessful move by two alderpersons to install exceptions to the city’s Welcoming City ordinance that would have given Chicago police power to cooperate with federal immigration officials. It was tabled last week on a 39-11 vote.
I asked Johnson to tell me more about the call with Pritzker.
Johnson said he wished Pritzker a happy birthday and “thanked him for his strong position” in Illinois remaining a sanctuary state. “I thanked him for that. And then we talked about how we have to continue to collaborate to ensure that all of our residents across the state of Illinois are fully supported, and particularly working people at this time.”
On Sunday, the governor said in a post, “Let there be no doubt we will stand up for all of our children and families. We will follow our state laws that protect the immigrant communities that live, work and thrive in Illinois.”
A companion to Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance is the Illinois Trust Act, which bans local law enforcement officers from being used for immigration enforcement.
I agree with a point Johnson made about what is often missing in the conversation; no one is defending people in the U.S. illegally who commit horrendous crimes, even though Trump tries to make it seem that way.
“I don’t know why it’s being lost.”
Said Johnson, “I don’t know why it’s being lost. … I made it very clear: Individuals who are here without documentation, and they commit a crime, and they are convicted of that crime, the federal law dictates what happens to them, not the mayor of Chicago, right? And so this is the part where I find, quite frankly, is an unnecessary exercise to have some sort of back and forth between the federal law versus our local ordinance. All we simply say is, as a sanctuary space, is that we’re not asking police officers to do the job of the federal government.”