City Holds Hearing on Immigration

By Kevin Robinson in News on Aug 6, 2008 5:45PM

As promised, the city council's Human Rights Committee held a hearing Tuesday to investigate who has been "tipping off" the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, leading to the arrest of nearly 60 people with Spanish surnames. "We will not tolerate this in Chicago...We want to know where it's coming from and who is filing these reports," said 26th Ward Alderman Billy Ocasio, chairman of the City Council's Human Relations Committee.

In 1985, Mayor Harold Washington, protesting the government's decision to question the immigration status of people seeking city services and to search city records in an effort to find undocumented immigrants, issued an executive order forbidding city employees from enforcing federal immigration laws. Daley re-affirmed that order in 1989, and in 2006 it became city law. The Chicago Police Department has already investigated 30 of the recent cases, finding that Chicago police officers weren't responsible. 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis, who requested the hearing, suggested that cook county jail guards or assistant state's attorneys might be turning names over to ICE. But a spokesman for county sheriff Tom Dart says that county guards "are not allowed to assist ICE in going after immigrants."

According to ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro "the previous day's arrest records are made available to ICE by the state's attorney's office.... ICE does not racially profile. We are mandated to enforce the nation's immigration laws and we aggressively do so in a fair and humane manner. Anyone residing illegally in the U.S.is subject to deportation and we place a high priority on those illegal aliens who are committing crimes and threatening the public safety."