Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday condemned the federal government’s hunt for local records following news of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subpoenaing a municipal ID program used by noncitizens.
“It’s bad,” the mayor told reporters at his weekly news conference. “It’s wrong.”
The mayor’s short remarks came after the Tribune reported Friday that the city received a summons April 17 requiring the city to turn over the past three years of CityKey records, according to a copy obtained by the Tribune in a Freedom of Information Act request.
Johnson corporation counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry said the administration won’t cooperate with the subpoena because doing so would expose vulnerable applicants.
“We respectfully declined within the bounds of the law, given the privacy issues and specifically the exposure of groups like domestic violence victims, which would have been exposed had that information been provided, which would have been in contravention to their rights,” Richardson-Lowry said. “We will continue to monitor … all administrative warrants, as we are doing now, and we’ve put a process in place should we receive future administrative warrants from this administration.”
The ICE subpoena called on the city to “provide a copy of the application and all supporting documents for all individuals who applied for a CityKey identification card between April 17, 2022, and April 17, 2025, and used any foreign document as proof of identity, including but not limited to: consular identification card, foreign driver’s license, or foreign passport.”
Richardson-Lowry noted the subpoena was an administrative warrant, meaning the city does not have to comply unless ICE chooses to escalate by seeking a court order.
“Should they move towards a court setting, we will respond in kind,” Richardson-Lowry said. “In some other categories, we produce documents that we do think we’re obligated to produce. But with respect to CityKey, we don’t believe such an obligation is there.”
The ID program was launched in 2017 by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city Clerk Anna Valencia as part of a stand against Trump — though it is not just for immigrants. While officials trumpeted the safety of the CityKey application during its inception, promising the city wouldn’t keep identifying documents in case federal officials sought to track down applicants, the situation recently changed.
After being overwhelmed by demand for the IDs by Venezuelan migrants at in-person events in fall 2023, Valencia started offering an online application in December 2024. To meet state document requirements, the clerk’s office has kept application materials for more than 2,700 people who used the online CityKey system since then, a spokesperson for Valencia told the Tribune on Friday.
Johnson spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said Friday, “Turning over personal information would betray the privacy and trust of residents who participated in the program. Mayor Johnson will continue to resist any attempts by the federal government to violate the rights and protections of Chicagoans.”
Tonantzin Carmona, former chief of policy for the city clerk, told the Tribune Wednesday that the office “examined every possible worst case scenario of how data could be used against a particular group to harm them” before CityKey’s 2017 launch — including a federal subpoena.
“We definitely discussed this possible scenario,” Carmona, who left the clerk’s office in 2019 and is now a Brookings Institution fellow, said. “Disabling the online portal may be the most responsible course of action.”
Carmona added that the federal government’s actions could create a “chilling effect” across the U.S. Outside Chicago, the Trump administration has been pressuring the Internal Revenue Service to share data with ICE to identify immigrants for deportations. A federal judge in May refused to block the IRS from doing so.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Trump in allowing his Department of Government Efficiency to access personal data stored in Social Security systems.
“City officials should be prepared for it to not be the only program that gets targeted,” Carmona said. “This moment isn’t just about records. It’s about whether people feel that they can exist in public spaces, seek help from public agencies or like, fully belong in the city they call home.”
CityKey appeals to immigrants because it allows noncitizens to obtain a city government-issued ID. It’s unclear how many of its 87,100-plus applicants during the time period encompassed in ICE’s subpoena are immigrants. The city clerk policy is to only retain records for those who apply via the online portal.
The Tribune also obtained an ICE subpoena sent to Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation on March 21 that sought payroll records for current and recent employees as part of a worker eligibility audit.
“It’s important to a community that wants to be an immigrant sanctuary to also be a data sanctuary, and that means to collect and retain as little information as possible about immigrants,” Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said. “The solution is for the holders of the data — in this case, the mayor of the City of Chicago — to fight back and say, ‘No. We’re going to use every legal tool at our disposal to protect data privacy.’”