DOJ asks judge to deny IL’s motion to dismiss migrant sanctuary lawsuit
[April 03, 2025]
By Greg Bishop | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Justice is urging a federal
district court judge to deny a motion to dismiss its challenge to
Illinois’ migrant sanctuary policies.
Arguing Illinois’ migrant sanctuary policies “allow criminal illegal
aliens to move freely throughout the United States, inflicting harm on
victims that would have been averted had the alien been detained,” the
DOJ moved Tuesday to deny the motion to dismiss from Chicago, Cook
County and the state of Illinois.
The DOJ filed its lawsuit shortly after U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi was
sworn into office under the Trump administration.
Wednesday, state Sen. Javier Cervantes, D-Chicago, said the progressives
in the General Assembly are going to have to continue to play defense.
“We’re doing our best right now here to look at what’s happening and
then build those policies to be on the defense, because we have to,”
Cervantes said during an unrelated news conference in Springfield.
“That’s what we’re here for.”
State Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, said it’s a new day with the
Trump administration.
“The harder they push, they’re going to come up against a guy who is not
going to be pushed around in President [Donald] Trump,” Bryant told The
Center Square Wednesday at the capitol in Springfield. “We think they’re
going to find out that this DOJ under this president is going to push
back very hard.”
In its filing, the DOJ said Illinois’ migrant sanctuary policies “work
an extraordinary assault on the Federal Government’s enforcement of the
immigration laws at a time when the United States is facing a ‘national
emergency’ from the unprecedented ‘illegal entry of aliens’ into the
country.”
Illinois’ state and local migrant sanctuary policies are preempted by
the Immigration and Nationality Act, the DOJ argues, “because they stand
as an obstacle to achieving the full purposes and objectives of that
Act.”
In their motions to dismiss filed last month in the case, the state of
Illinois said the DOJ’s lawsuit is misguided.
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“Consistent with the Tenth Amendment, federal law preserves
Illinois’s sovereign right to opt out of assisting federal
immigration agents with their civil immigration enforcement
responsibilities,” the filing said. “That is what Illinois has done
through its statutes, the TRUST Act and the Way Forward Act.”
The DOJ argued migrant sanctuary policies that prohibit state and
local law enforcement cooperation “impede congressionally sanctioned
and authorized federal immigration law.”
“Under the Tenth Amendment, Congress must exercise its legislative
power over individuals directly and may not commandeer States into
enacting a federal regulatory program,” the DOJ said. “Under the
Supremacy Clause, ‘when federal and state law conflict, federal law
prevails and state law is preempted.’”
Bryant said final resolution to the issue will take time.
“We are only two months into the Trump administration,” she said. “I
think the Pritzker administration is going to get smacked down
hard.”
Cervantes expects the Trump administration to “keep coming.”
“I want the people of Illinois and our immigrant community to
understand that we’re here to be on the defense as much as
possible,” he said.
The DOJ said the state’s policies have the purpose of thwarting
federal law enforcement efforts to detain and deport criminal
illegal aliens.
“They deny federal immigration agents access to aliens who are in
state and local custody. They prohibit state and local officers from
releasing aliens, upon expiration of their state or local custody,
into federal custody when federal agents present Congressionally
authorized detainers and administrative warrants,” the DOJ said.
“The Sanctuary Policies also prevent otherwise willing state and
local officers from all communications with federal immigration
agents necessary for those agents to carry out their duties.”
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