Amid threat of immigration sweeps, Lightfoot moves to reassure, inform immigrants

With the threat of immigration sweeps still hovering, Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed Wednesday to strengthen Chicago’s status as a “welcoming city” and protect immigrants here from mass deportations.

On June 22, President Donald Trump removed — for at least two weeks — his threat of mass deportation round-ups in 10 cities, including Chicago. The delay was to give Congress time to “work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border,” Trump tweeted at the time.

“The two-weeks clock is up, which is what the president had given. We’ve heard some notion that it may start again,” possibly on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, Lightfoot said.

After meeting with business leaders and immigrants rights advocates at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Lightfoot acknowledged if Trump gives the go-ahead, ICE has the resources to “execute the order” in Chicago.

But they would do it without any cooperation whatsoever from the Chicago Police Department.

CPD “will not team up with ICE to detain any resident. ... They’re not gonna be facilitating or otherwise providing any assistance in any raids — whether it’s traffic stops [or] additional support. … We have also cut off ICE from any access from any CPD databases and that will remain permanent,” the mayor said.

Lightfoot has “personally spoken with ICE leadership” to voice her “strong objection to any raids,” she said.

“Chicago is and will always be a welcoming city that will never tolerate ICE tearing our families apart,” she said.

“I don’t want our immigrant residents to be fearful of being in Chicago. I don’t want people not going to work, pursuing their daily activities or their children being fearful that their parents or guardians are gonna be taken from them.”

Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to strengthen Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance by eliminating so-called “carve-outs.”

Currently, Chicago Police officers are permitted to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement if targeted individuals: are in the city’s gang database; have pending felony prosecutions or prior felony convictions; or are the subject of an outstanding criminal warrant.

Immigrant activists, the Black Youth Project, Hispanic aldermen and the ACLU have demanded removal of all of those exemptions.

On Wednesday, the mayor reaffirmed that promise, and went further — so much so that she sounded a lot like her Trump-baiting predecessor.

Rahm Emanuel waged a relentless war of words with Trump that all but encouraged the president to fire back with constant jabs about Chicago crime.

Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz viewed the battle as so self-serving and destructive, he wrote a transition memo to Lightfoot urging the new mayor to “stop the rhetoric on national and international issues and focus on Chicago.”

Lightfoot has, indeed, toned it down. But she draws the line at mass deportation.

“We exist as an urban center in a community of immigrants. By virtue of that, we’re an irritant. But we’re gonna stand strong because that’s who we are. That’s what our values are. And we would be lesser as a city if we didn’t stand up and support our immigrant community,” she said.

“It’s not about being confrontational with the Trump administration. But it is 100 percent about being supportive of our immigrant community.”

Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia praised the new mayor for stepping up the city’s ground game to ensure restaurants know their rights and the information is distributed to them in multiple languages.

“If ICE comes in and raids, they have to have a warrant. If they don’t have a legal warrant, they can’t be there. And if they do ask for documents, you’ve got 72 hours to give documents,” Toia said.

The restaurant industry is Illinois’ largest private-sector employer, with 300,000 employees in the Chicago area — 40 percent of them immigrants.

“Over the last hundred years, it’s been the immigrant community that’s been the backbone of the hospitality industry,” Toia said. “Start with the eastern Europeans, to the Italians, to the Greeks, to the Asians, to the Africans, to the Latinos to the Mexicans.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who was in Chicago on Wednesday, also weighed in.

“We have laws in place for the [Illinois] State Police for state authorities about what information gets shared, what coordination will take place. In fact we strengthened those laws to protect the residents of the state, even those who are undocumented, over the last session of the Legislature,” Pritzker said. “So I stand four square with the mayor and want to make sure that the people of our state, the residents of our state, are protected from these kinds of intrusions by ICE.”

Contributing: Tina Sfondeles