Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said Wednesday she will bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using the city’s police databases ahead of the Trump administration’s promised ICE raids slated to take place across more than 10 major U.S. cities on Sunday.
Chicago police “will not team up with ICE to detain any resident,” the mayor said following meetings with immigration rights advocates. “They’re not going to 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.”
In a statement to the Chicago Tribune, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the city’s Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) database will not be available to ICE officials, though several federal government agencies will still have access.
“All other federal agencies still have access to these systems, as sharing this information is crucial to active criminal investigations in which we are partnering with federal agencies along with intelligence sharing functions that are vital to national homeland security functions,” Guglielmi stated.
Organized Communities Against Deportation was one of several immigrant rights groups making demands on the major to buck federal authorities.
“The mayor ran a campaign on the promise that she would end police-ICE collaboration or remove the loopholes to the current Welcoming City ordinances,” said Rey Wences, a member of Organized Communities Against Deportation. “However, the real threat of massive raids are here, and we can not wait for the next City Council meeting to address this issue.”
Wences says that removing only ICE isn’t enough.
“There are so many subagencies within the [Department of Homeland Security] that can also carry out raids,” she said. “This executive order asks that any agency under DHS is denied access to the databases in the city.”
Source: Breitbart
