Lightfoot can make a city built on immigration even more welcoming

Chicago can do more to be a welcoming city for immigrants. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and a new City Council should see to it — soon.

They should act quickly to beef up the city’s Welcoming City ordinance, also known as a sanctuary ordinance, that says Chicago Police generally will not detain or arrest an immigrant for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel got attention for the ordinance in 2012 from the national news media. At the time, then-President Barack Obama was seeking cooperation from local law enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants. It still makes me shake my head because Emanuel carved exceptions into the ordinance that actually made it weak, much weaker than Cook County’s legislation.

The exceptions give cops the OK to hold or arrest an immigrant for ICE if the person is a defendant in a criminal case with a felony charge pending, or has an outstanding criminal warrant, or is an immigrant, a gang member, or has been convicted of a felony.

Almost all those exceptions rob people of due process. I wouldn’t have a problem with expelling gang members from the country, for example, except that Chicago has no good way of identifying them. It relies on a gang database riddled with errors, and community organizers want it abolished for good reason. Among the listed exceptions, I think that only in instances where a person has been convicted of a felony should there be cooperation between cops and ICE.

In 2015, immigrant advocacy groups worked with Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa to try to convince Emanuel to eliminate the exceptions, but Emanuel didn’t want to go there.

It’s a good time to try again, this time with Lightfoot. Ramirez-Rosa told me he is gearing up to do so by proposing legislation either next week or next month.

As a candidate for mayor, Lightfoot expressed strong support for getting rid of the four exceptions in the Chicago ordinance.

“I support amending the Welcoming City Ordinance to remove the four exceptions to the general rule not to arrest or hold anyone based solely on an ICE warrant or hold request,” Lightfoot wrote in her Sun-Times candidate questionnaire last winter. “As mayor, I would only allow for compliance with valid warrants or court orders that are signed by a judge.”

Requiring a warrant that is signed by a judge would put Chicago more in line with Cook County’s ordinance, which says ICE must produce a criminal warrant to gain access to people in jail. That’s plenty fair.

“If the mayor keeps her commitment, progressive aldermen, and new aldermen, will be prepared to get this done,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

It’s important to point out that there is no such thing as a true sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants. U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement still can arrest and detain people at will.

A few weeks ago, for example, ICE agents arrested Chicagoan Paula Hincapie-Rendon, an immigrant from Colombia who has temporary legal protections to live and work in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They can’t deport her, but they used her to go after her parents, as Carlos Ballesteros of the Sun-Times and Report for America reported this week.

Local cops played no role, as far as I can tell. Good thing, too. Chicago cops have enough to do. They shouldn’t be doing the work of federal authorities, which would only fuel mistrust between the police and immigrant communities.

The more distance between Chicago Police and ICE, the better for all of us.

Sun-Times columnist Marlen Garcia is also a member of the Editorial Board.

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