Claiming there is “no such thing as absolute immunity in America,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday he plans to make Chicago the first city in the nation to hold the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers accountable for criminal conduct.
In a defiant address to the National Press Club, Johnson said Chicagoans are “asking us to do more in this moment” to challenge President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions and it is “our aim to meet their expectations” with “even stronger enforcement measures” that he had “not previously considered.”
“This is not about politics. This is about a more fundamental idea that, in our country, nobody is above the law. There is no such thing as absolute immunity in America,” the mayor said. “If you commit a crime, you should be tried like anyone else, regardless of the badge on your chest or the mask on your face.”
Earlier this week, Johnson called for a coordinated and sustained nationwide protest akin to the civil rights movement in response to the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Johnson also said he was contemplating measures to hold ICE agents accountable for civil right abuses he believes they have committed on the streets of Chicago, Minneapolis and other U.S. cities.
The mayor’s speech didn’t reveal much more, but Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd), one of the mayor’s staunchest City Council supporters, offered a possible sneak peak into Johnson’s strategy during Tuesday’s hearing on Operation Midway Blitz, a hearing that featured virtual warnings from City Council leaders in the Minneapolis area.
“Post-facist regimes around the world, it is a best practice to hold those perpetrators accountable,” Rodriguez said. “And I hope one day, we have rooms like this full with tribunals and prosecutions holding individuals accountable for these great travesties that are occurring in Minneapolis, that have occurred in Chicago.”
The shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis have touched off a political avalanche that prompted Trump to pull Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino out of Minneapolis and dispatch border czar Tom Homan in his place. Trump also promised to scale down the Minneapolis operation.
During an interview Wednesday with WBEZ host Sasha-Ann Simons, rapid responders on the ground here and in the Minneapolis area essentially agreed with Johnson’s call to hold ICE agents accountable. Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago and a rapid responder on the Northwest Side, said there can’t be a return to normalcy in Chicago “without abolishing ICE. Not without going through a serious process of reparation and implementation of justice,” Rivera said.
Johnson said the Minneapolis shootings and the shooting death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE agents in Chicago Sept. 12 has “forced us to look at executive authority in a new way.”
Johnson said he has widened that authority by issuing three executive orders: declaring ICE-free zones; protecting the right to protest and laying out “clear parameters for city departments” in the event of a National Guard or federal troop deployment.
“As mayors, we have the ability to wield executive authority to protect people — if we are willing to exercise it,” the mayor said.
By bombarding the Trump administration with more than 40 lawsuits — including a challenge to the National Guard deployment that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — Johnson bragged that Chicago had “managed to [send] the Texas National Guard back to Texas without every deploying.”
The mayor also argued that his laser focus on attacking the root causes of violent crime had allowed Chicago to close the books on 2025 with the fewest number of murders in sixty years, and a 35% drop in shootings.
Johnson also talked about Chicago’s ongoing struggle to fend off federal funding cuts in the critical areas of education, transportation, mental health, diversity and environmental justice.
When Trump cut funding to the Chicago Public Schools amid complaints about the so-called “Black Student Success Plan,” the mayor said his administration “responded by sending additional dollars to our school system to make up the difference.”
But Johnson said the “hyper-militarized” immigration raids have proved to be the most difficult challenge that Chicago has faced during the second Trump era. It’s a two-part challenge, he said, that includes the “raids themselves” and the protests that followed that have been “met with rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper balls.”
After conferring with the mayors of Los Angeles, Portland, Baltimore, Denver, Oakland, Boston and Minneapolis, “one common thread” emerged: the importance of “Know Your Rights” campaigns to educate people about their Constitutional rights.
“We happen to believe that, in the United States, there is no such thing as being `too well educated’ on your rights under our Constitution,” Johnson said.