‘Individual rights are under attack’: Pritzker, Illinois lawmakers assess Trump’s first two days
About 2,000 undocumented immigrants could be deported from Chicago in the coming days by President Donald Trump’s administration, Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday.
Trump campaigned on mass deportations, and his new border czar Tom Homan had previously announced Chicago would be ground zero of the effort.
“They’ve not communicated with us, so we don’t know when exactly those enforcement actions might take place,” Pritzker said at an unrelated bill signing in Chicago. “We have heard they (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) are targeting as many as 2,000 people initially in the city of Chicago alone.”
“We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens,” Trump said in his inaugural address Monday.
Pritzker stressed, “if there are violent criminals who have been convicted of crimes who are undocumented — they are supposed to be deported. I don’t want them in my state.”
But he defended other undocumented Illinoisans. “We’re talking about people who are paying taxes … these are people who have raised families in the United States, who are law-abiding and often are the anchors of their communities.”
Democrat Pritzker and Republican Trump have shared a mutual disdain for years.
“Individual rights are under attack causing fear for people with disabilities, for pregnant women, for legal immigrants and temporary migrants, for LGBTQ Americans, small-business owners and so many others,” Pritzker said.
The governor also took aim at an executive order signed by Trump Monday intended to end automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are unlawfully in the country.
“That’s unconstitutional,” Pritzker said. “We will not follow an unconstitutional executive order.”
But regarding whether he would work with the White House on other issues, Pritzker said “of course.”
“When it comes to doing good things for Illinois and for our working families and for people across our state, I’ll work with anyone,” he said.
Other Illinois Democrats weighing in on Trump’s return included U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who condemned pardoning and commuting the sentences of about 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The grimmest reality of that day was the resulting deaths of five law enforcement officers and the injury of approximately 140 others, many of whom still pay a price for that day,” Durbin said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago was in the Capitol when the attack happened. “I heard the firing of gas canisters and the ring of gunshots as Capitol police valiantly kept the insurrectionists from invading the House floor,” he said in a statement. “These pardons are a betrayal of our law enforcement.”
U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Downers Grove said Trump’s executive order withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement meant “we now join Libya, Iran, and Yemen as the only countries in the world incapable of prioritizing expanded access to cleaner, cheaper energy.”
The executive order stated such agreements did not “reflect our country’s values,” and steered “taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance.”
However, both Durbin and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Hoffman Estates supported Trump’s pick of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio “has the experience and qualifications necessary to be an effective secretary of state,” Duckworth said in a statement.