WASHINGTON — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has said he plans to use a U.S. House committee hearing Thursday to educate Republican lawmakers on how the state’s so-called sanctuary policies have helped create safer communities.
But spiraling events triggered by the Trump administration’s recent forceful immigration enforcement tactics, including in Los Angeles and Chicago, could turn a politically contentious debate far more combative.
Beginning at 9 a.m. Chicago time Thursday, Pritzker will appear alongside fellow Democratic governors Kathy Hochul of New York and Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was last year’s unsuccessful vice presidential nominee, in a long-planned hearing before the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Underscoring a key Trump talking point, the GOP lawmakers repeatedly have tried to link immigration to violent crime and have faulted Democratic officials for limiting the ways state and local police can carry out immigration enforcement. The same Oversight Committee held a March hearing with big-city mayors, including Brandon Johnson of Chicago, to argue the same point.
But after much hype, the Republicans failed to make a splash with the mayors’ hearing, as city officials largely avoided efforts to be drawn into partisan fights. The mayors insisted that sanctuary laws improved public safety, not jeopardized it.
Pritzker seems to be following the mayors’ example in trying to sidestep major controversies while also blaming Congress for its inability over decades to pass an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws that would allow longtime immigrants without documentation to gain legal status and to help businesses find workers they need.
“Certainly, I’m not there to lecture to (Republican lawmakers),” Pritzker told reporters last week. “I’m there to take questions from them and respond to them.”
“There may be members on that committee who are simply there for a dog-and-pony show, who simply want to grandstand in front of the cameras. I hope not. That’s inappropriate,” he said. “I’m going there on a serious matter to give them my views about how we’re managing through a problem that’s been created for the states by the federal government.”
Pritzker’s comments came before Trump ordered National Guard troops and Marines to Southern California in recent days — over the objection of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, which has sued the Trump administration over the moves. The military forces are tasked with supporting federal agents in immigration enforcement.
Closer to home for Pritzker, immigrants and advocates have rallied against the Chicago Police Department, denouncing officers’ alleged cooperation with federal agents who detained at least 20 immigrants last week on the Near South Side.
The governor said he thinks Chicago police “followed the law.” But several Latino members of the Chicago City Council have called for an investigation. Sanctuary policies allow police to cooperate in criminal investigations of immigrants but not in immigration enforcement actions, which are civil violations.
“Thursday’s hearing is a high-stakes moment to defend our values and push back on the Trump administration’s war on immigrants,” U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago Democrat, said in an emailed statement. “I trust Governor Pritzker will stand firm, asserting that sanctuary policies keep families safe, build trust, and reflect who we are.”
“With L.A. still reeling from military-style raids and subsequent military deployments, this hearing is a chance to show the country that Illinois won’t be bullied into abandoning its immigrant communities,” Garcia added.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who studies civil rights and constitutional law, said Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California and comments suggesting Newsom should be arrested likely means Pritzker and the other Democratic governors will face a far different dynamic on Capitol Hill than the big-city mayors did a few months ago.
“The sea change in the political dynamics over (the weekend) puts this on a very different footing,” he said. “We’re just in a wildly different place now, especially once the National Guard starts getting called and lawsuits begin, and arrests are made at a very wide scale.”
“The inclination to be more aggressive in that environment and to be a little more adamant in taking positions might be part of the political calculus for some of the governors in a way that it wasn’t for the mayors,” Kreis added.
All the governors slated to appear Thursday face political pressure to stake out bold positions, he noted, as Pritzker publicly toys with the idea of a 2028 presidential run and Walz already has a national profile because of his vice presidential candidacy.
As Trump took control of National Guard troops against the wishes of Newsom, Pritzker and other Democratic governors blasted the move as an “alarming abuse of power.”
Trump’s National Guard order isn’t limited to California, although that’s the only place where it’s been used so far. Newsom has said the guard isn’t needed.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior senator, added his voice Monday to the growing chorus of outraged Democrats.
“What is clear is that President Trump manipulated these protests as an excuse to politicize the military and divert resources from pressing national security and disaster relief responsibilities,” Durbin said.
Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned why the Trump administration responded so forcefully to protests in Southern California, just months after Trump pardoned nearly 1,500 people who took part in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss. Many of those protesters assaulted police officers.
“It appears FBI Director (Kash) Patel’s comment (that) if you, ‘hit a cop, you’re going to jail,’ only applies to people who President Trump doesn’t agree with,” Durbin said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Pritzker preparing in D.C.
Pritzker arrived in Washington on Monday to prepare for his Oversight Committee testimony. It will be a constraining format for the billionaire governor because congressional hearings are designed to maximize attention for members of Congress, not their witnesses.
The Oversight Committee, in particular, is a contentious forum with partisan firebrands from both sides of the aisle competing for attention. There is no specific piece of legislation being considered by the lawmakers at the hearing.
Pritzker spokesman Matt Hill said in a statement that the two-term Democratic governor will “discuss his track record on public safety and the implementation of bipartisan state laws.”
“Despite the rhetoric of Republicans in Congress, Gov. Pritzker will share facts about how this bipartisan public safety law is fully compliant with federal law and ensures law enforcement can focus on doing their jobs well,” Hill said.
One point Pritzker is expected to highlight to committee Republicans is that Illinois’ Trust Act — which bans state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities who lack a judicially issued criminal warrant — was signed into law by a Republican, Pritzker’s predecessor, Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Pritzker retained and is personally paying the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling to help prepare him for the hearing. It is one of the firms Trump has sought to sanction for its involvement in previous legal cases against him.
Dana Remus, who conducted the vetting of Pritzker as a potential vice presidential candidate to unsuccessful Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, is among the legal team assisting Pritzker, according to people close to Pritzker.
Republicans plan to paint the prominent governors as weak on public safety.
“The Trump administration is taking decisive action to deport criminal illegal aliens from our nation but reckless sanctuary states like Illinois, Minnesota and New York are actively seeking to obstruct federal immigration enforcement,” U.S. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement last week.
“The governors of these states must explain why they are prioritizing the protection of criminal illegal aliens over the safety of U.S. citizens, and they must be held accountable,” he added.
Republican pressure mounts
Congressional Republicans have joined the Trump administration in trying to put pressure on sanctuary cities and states in recent months, often by withholding federal support for other services.
Last week, House Republicans passed a bill to remove Small Business Administration offices from sanctuary cities, including Chicago, Boston, Denver and New York. The proposal would support an initiative by SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in March to relocate the regional offices in six cities, including Chicago.
In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a memo implying grant money to Illinois and other sanctuary jurisdictions — or those that, like Illinois, allow unauthorized immigrants to drive legally — could be at risk.
Maria Castaneda, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the state wasn’t changing its policies in response to the memo.
And in February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to block federal law enforcement grants for Chicago and other sanctuary jurisdictions, although a federal judge in California ruled those actions unconstitutional in April.
“They are absolutely trying to bully (states and cities),” said Debu Gandhi, senior director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. “This overreach will override local control. Withholding community funding from Americans is not an effective way to improve public safety.”
Laurence Benenson, vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum, said there are legal limits to the repercussions the federal government can impose on states for not falling into line with the administration’s priorities. The Supreme Court, for example, has said financial penalties can’t be so severe that they are akin to a “gun to the head” of states for not complying, Benenson explained.
And it’s Congress — not the executive branch — that has to set the priorities.
“If they’re retroactively saying, ‘We’re adding all these conditions to this funding you’re already receiving,’ that’s another thing they’re going to be challenged on legally,” Benenson said.
Raising the stakes
Since returning to office, Trump has prioritized immigration enforcement with provocative actions, some of which judges have ruled illegal.
That includes deporting people to a prison in El Salvador without first holding legal hearings, detaining pro-Palestinian protesters and threatening to block all foreign students from Harvard University.
The administration has used plainclothes officers using unmarked vehicles and not wearing badges or agency identification to detain people suspected of immigration violations. Agents have taken people into custody after court hearings and at check-ins with caseworkers.
Gandhi said such actions undermine efforts to provide for public safety.
“What we’ve seen is recklessness and cruelty, not the promised actions that make Americans safer,” he said. “Immigrants are being targeted for their speech. International students who have not violated the law are having their legal status placed in jeopardy. People are being deported to a notorious foreign prison in a third country with no due process.”
Kreis, the law professor from Georgia State, said the Trump administration’s tactics have intensified the protests. But once federal agents are in danger, he said, local police are likely to move to protect them.
“As a liberal who is very much against a lot of what the Trump administration is doing with immigration policy, I can also see a very different scenario where the federal government was trying to enforce some civil rights policy that liberals would love,” he said.
Garcia, the Chicago congressman, said Thursday’s hearing comes as a response to difficulties Trump has faced in pushing key parts of his agenda through Congress and the jolts he has caused in the economy through tariffs and trade policy.
“Trump desperately needs to distract us from his failures,” Garcia said in his statement. “The economy is on the brink of a recession because the world is calling his bluff. We must stand strong against this cruel, authoritarian war that seeks to scapegoat immigrants to cover up the incompetence and corruption of the President and his administration.”
Vock is a freelance reporter based in Washington, D.C. Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.
