Chicago Police Department (CPD) personnel should focus their time and resources on documenting interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and referring them for prosecution, according to Mayor Brandon Johnson.
On Saturday, Mayor Johnson signed an executive order directing Chicago police officers to prepare reports on “any violation of state or local law by federal agents” and to ensure they preserve body-camera footage.
The city’s sworn law enforcement should also “seek to identify the federal supervisory officer on scene, attempt to verify the supervisory officer’s name and badge number, and record the credential verification using body-cameras,” according to the mayor’s office.
Johnson signed the “ICE on Notice” on Saturday.
“The lawlessness of Trump’s militarized immigration agents puts the lives and well-being of every Chicagoan in immediate danger,” Johnson claimed. “With today’s order, we are putting ICE on notice in our city.”
He said the Windy City “will not sit idly by while Trump floods federal agents into our communities and terrorizes our residents.”
Johnson’s call to report ICE agents for prosecution by the Cook County state’s attorney will face several challenges.
State’s Attorney Eileen Burke said she has not endorsed Johnson’s proposal, despite his assertion that her office helped draft the executive order.
“We do not provide legal approval of any matter until we’ve reviewed it,” she stated on X. “On such a critical issue, it’s important we get it right.”
Meanwhile, George Washington University law Professor Jonathan Turley offered his own criticism.
Turley, a Chicago native, said “it is highly unlikely that [ICE agents] could be liable for the increased enforcement of immigration laws.”
The law professor also mocked Johnson’s threat to have his police file “incident reports.”
“ICE officers are presumably fleeing en masse at the very threat of such CPD reports,” Turley wrote sarcastically on his commentary website.
Johnson’s statement of trust in his police officers is a reversal of his history of criticizing Chicago’s men and women in blue.
“Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities,” the mayor said last September.
He also called for defunding the police while serving as a Cook County commissioner in 2020, a claim he later tried to walk back while running for mayor in 2023.
Johnson is not the only mayor to urge police to document alleged ICE abuse. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson also recently unveiled a similar “set of actions,” aimed at the federal agents.
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