Rudy Valdez leads the public safety committee for the Coalition of Latino Leaders in Rockford. He remembers the community pushback several years ago when Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana considered allowing for a portion of the county jail to be used as a detention site for ICE — the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency — which executes deportations.
“From a strictly business standpoint, it's not good for the community,” Valdez argued then. “Now, you add in the humanitarian aspect, then it's definitely morally wrong.”
Folks packed community and county meetings. He said a rally scheduled in opposition to the plan was just about to begin, when county officials announced they weren’t moving forward with the ICE agreement.
"The rally that was supposed to be against the detention center turned out to be more of a celebration that there was not going to be one,” he said. “Officials were actually listening to the population, the majority of the people here in the Winnebago.”
Since then, it’s not just public pressure that keeps local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. It’s now prohibited under law.
So, as President-elect Donald Trump seeks local partners to execute his mass deportation plan, he won’t find one in Illinois.
“Now, the Trust Act draws a very clear line saying that that's not going to happen here in Illinois,” said Fred Tsao, the senior policy counsel for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Tsao was involved in drafting the Illinois Trust Act, which prohibits local law enforcement agencies, including police and the sheriff, from working with immigration officials.
“If ICE wanted somebody who was in police custody or being held at a jail,” Tsao said, “they would need to go to federal court, get a federal criminal warrant and serve that warrant on the jail or the police department.”
So, under the law, a person can’t be held in jail beyond the time they would otherwise be released just because ICE wants them detained.
“The second thing it did," he said, "was to bar local police from arresting anybody based on their immigration status or anything that may be perceived as their immigration status."
The law passed in 2017 and was signed by then-governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican.
In 2021, the law was revamped under the Illinois Forward Act. It detailed further restrictions, such as barring immigration officials and local law enforcement from sharing information. It also prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about someone’s immigration status.
“And perhaps most significantly," Tsao said, "also barring county jails from entering into or maintaining contracts with ICE for purposes of ICE detention. Essentially, we ended immigration detention here in the state of Illinois through that law.”
Several Republicans have called for a repeal of the law, claiming that it impedes law enforcement.
But Tsao said the law helps law enforcement improve cooperation with the immigrant community. It provides assurances that when someone calls law enforcement for help because they are a victim or a witness to a crime, they won’t be questioned about their immigration status.
“So, if someone is going to have that concern that they themselves or family member is going to be targeted for immigration enforcement,” Tsao said, “they sure as heck are not going to call the police. So, crimes will go unreported.”
Tsao said despite the limitations the law places on local law enforcement assisting immigration officials, the law does not stop ICE from carrying out deportations in Illinois.
“They can still raid homes and businesses," he said, "and try to arrest and jail and deport people as they see fit."
According to stats from ICE, its Midwest office made nearly 24,000 arrests for immigration violations from fiscal years 2021 to 2024.
As Trump’s inauguration nears, immigrant rights groups are ramping up “Know Your Rights” trainings in response to his promised mass deportation.
