As Chicago strengthens immigrant protections, downstate officials split on sanctuary laws

[February 14, 2025]  By Lily Carey and Medill Illinois News Bureau

SPRINGFIELD – As the Trump administration has begun enacting mass deportations in recent weeks, activists and public officials in Chicago have been scaling up protections for immigrants.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have both vowed to leverage state law to limit such arrests, leading the Trump administration to sue the state, Cook County and Chicago last week over their respective sanctuary laws. The state’s TRUST Act, enacted in 2017, prevents local authorities from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement with civil immigration enforcement or asking people about their immigration status.

But beyond the Chicago area, the landscape of local immigration laws is more mixed, and some lawmakers in downstate Illinois are trying to block those protections.

In 2023 and 2024, over a dozen Illinois counties and cities passed non-sanctuary laws or resolutions, explicitly stating that they don’t intend to welcome undocumented immigrants — and many of these municipalities are doubling down on their non-sanctuary approach in the wake of President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations.

“We had a clear mandate from our voters that they wanted us to react with the more ‘Trump way’ of handling these immigration issues,” Drew Muffler, chairman of the Grundy County Board, said in an interview. “We didn’t want to find ourselves financially on the hook to have to provide accommodations (for incoming migrants).”

Grundy County was the first municipality in the state to enact a non-sanctuary ordinance in December 2023. Muffler said the move was sparked by voter feedback on a 2020 referendum, where 64% of county residents said they preferred a more conservative approach to immigration law.

Like Grundy County, the counties that have enacted non-sanctuary laws did so when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses of migrants to Illinois. Local officials hoped to send a message that they wouldn’t welcome these buses after some began dropping migrants off in the suburbs with no warning, rather than a drop-off site in Chicago.

But with the TRUST Act in place statewide, non-sanctuary resolutions in Grundy County and throughout the state have little legal power, even in the wake of Trump’s changes to federal immigration policy.

“People have been asking, what is Grundy County going to do with the new facts on the table? And obviously we leaned on the sheriff for that question, and his answer is very simple: we have to, as of right now, follow the TRUST Act,” Muffler said.

Under this law, state and local police are legally not allowed to assist ICE in federal civil immigration enforcement, as long as they don’t prevent federal forces from doing their job. It applies to the entire state, even in communities that align more closely with Trump’s approach to immigration law.

“Counties or cities or villages where, say, the local government may not be so inclined to resist immigration enforcement, they still cannot participate in immigration enforcement activities,” Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said in an interview.

In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, this issue has mainly impacted the greater Chicago area, where the immigrant population is much higher. According to the ACLU of Illinois, there had been about 1,000 arrests nationally as of last Friday, with about 100 of these taking place in Chicago and its suburbs. The ACLU and local law enforcement officials told Capitol News Illinois that they aren’t aware of any ICE arrests outside the Chicago area.

A protest sign is pictured outside of Trump Tower in Chicago on Jan. 21, 2025, the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated. (Medill Illinois News Bureau photo by Ismael Belkoura)

Still, partisan opposition to the TRUST Act has become louder in Springfield. In January, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would overturn the TRUST Act, requiring local law enforcement to comply with ICE if necessary.

“It’s my view that public safety is at greater risk when you restrict the ability for federal and state authorities to communicate with one another,” Sen. Andrew Chesney, R-Freeport, lead sponsor of the Immigration Enforcement Act, told Capitol News Illinois. “We have a responsibility to make sure that people are here legally, and that those that are not are quickly removed.”

The Democratic supermajority in the state legislature — led by Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, both of whom supported the TRUST Act in 2017 — is unlikely to support any challenge to the sanctuary law, Tsao said. The Immigration Enforcement Act is sponsored by three Republican senators and has yet to gain Democratic backing.

The strongest local sanctuary laws in the state are mostly in the greater Chicago area, in towns like Skokie, Berwyn and Oak Park. In Evanston, the city council recently signed off on additional protections for the city’s sanctuary ordinance. It includes several additional protections for immigrants and city data on residents’ immigration statuses, making it “perhaps one of the strongest (sanctuary laws) in the entire country,” Tsao said.

“By taking these steps, the City of Evanston aims to uphold its values of community trust and safety while ensuring every resident has the opportunity to thrive,” the city said in a statement. “Together, we are building a vibrant, inclusive community for all.”

A handful of other municipalities in downstate Illinois have joined Chicago and some suburbs in their push for sanctuary laws. In 2017 and 2018, cities such as Normal and Urbana enacted local ordinances declaring that their communities welcomed immigrants. These came in response to stricter immigration policies during Trump’s first term.

In Normal, which has had a Welcoming Community Ordinance since 2018, Police Chief Stephen Petrilli said the police department’s policy is to comply with the TRUST Act during any interactions with ICE and not to ask individuals about their immigration status during routine investigations.

Petrilli said his office has seen an influx of questions about immigration policy in the weeks since mass deportations began in Chicago.

“We’ve held several meetings with different community stakeholders,” Petrilli said. “We’re really just assuring the public that we are adhering to the state law.”

Lily Carey is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a Fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.