July 10, 2017

VIA EMAIL

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago City Council

City of Chicago
121 N. LaSalle Street
Chicago, Illinois 60602

Re: Strengthening Chicagos Welcoming City Ordinance

Dear Mayor Emanuel and Chicago City Council members:

Chicagos immigrant communities face profound peril and insecurity as a result of the Trump
administrations sweeping and aggressive immigration agenda.1 Recognizing this, Mayor
Emanuel has pledged to Chicago immigrants, You are safe in Chicago. You are secure in
Chicago and you are supported in Chicago.2 But Chicago is falling short of that promise. To
ensure that immigrants are truly safe, secure, and supported, Chicagos Welcoming City
Ordinance must be amended to protect all immigrants, without exception.

The Citys Welcoming City Ordinance, adopted in 2012, represented a significant step forward
in Chicagos treatment of immigrants. Under the ordinance, the Chicago Police Department
(CPD) may not rely on an administrative warrant or detainer request to arrest, detain, or
continue to detain any person, or to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access
to any person in its custody. The City strengthened the ordinance last year by prohibiting threats
based on immigration status.

1
The administration intends to add at least 15,000 new immigration and border patrol agents and
construct new detention facilities. It has eliminated the enforcement priorities of the Obama
administration, and has attempted to coerce local law enforcement agencies to aid them in immigration
enforcement. See Exec. Order No. 13768, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,
82 Fed. Reg. 8799 (Jan. 30, 2017), available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-
02102.pdf; Exec. Order No. 13767, Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, 82
Fed. Reg. 9783 (Jan. 25, 2017), available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-
02095.pdf.
2
Charles Thomas and Laura Podesta, Chicago to remain a sanctuary city for immigrants, Emanuel says,
ABC 7 Chicago, November 14, 2016, available at http://abc7chicago.com/news/emanuel-chicago-to-
remain-a-sanctuary-city-for-immigrants/1606252/.
The Welcoming City Ordinance recognizes that the cooperation of all persons, both
documented citizens and those without documentation status, is essential to achieve the City's
goals of protecting life and property, preventing crime and resolving problems, and that
immigrant community members, whether documented citizens or not, should be treated with
respect and dignity by all City employees and should not be subjected to physical abuse, threats
or intimidation.3 But these goals are severely undermined by the exemptions in the Ordinance.
Specifically, CPD may arrest or detain individuals based solely upon an ICE detainer request or
suspected civil immigration violation if those individuals: (1) have any outstanding criminal
warrants, (2) have any prior felony convictions, (3) have pending felony charges, or (4) have
been identified as a gang member in a law enforcement database. These carve-outs do not
advance public safety. Instead, they erode community trust in law enforcement and place the
City at risk of liability for constitutional violations.

The Chicago Police Department has plenty of tools at its disposal to apprehend individuals who
pose a threat to the public, whether or not they are immigrants. The CPD may arrest anyone with
an outstanding criminal warrant, and individuals with pending felony charges can be detained
without bail if a court determines that they are a flight risk or a threat to the public.

By contrast, the exemptions in the Welcoming City Ordinance apply broadly to persons who
have not been judicially determined to pose a threat. These exceptions expose the City to liability
for violations of the Fourth Amendment. Multiple federal courts have held that detaining people
without probable cause based on non-judicial ICE warrants and detainers violates the Fourth
Amendment.4

There is no reason to believe that the exemptions in the ordinance will contribute to public
safety. For example, an outstanding warrant is no indication of dangerousness. Of the 41,000
outstanding warrants in Cook County, more than half are over a decade old, and most pertain to
technical violations of probation or supervised release, rather than new offenses.5 Likewise,
under the carve-out for any individual with a prior felony conviction, a person with a 20-year-old

3
Chicago Municipal Code, Ch. 2-173, Welcoming City Ordinance.
4
Villars v. Kubiatowski, 45 F. Supp. 3d 791 (N.D. Ill. 2014) (plaintiff stated a viable Fourth Amendment
claim against both ICE and local officials where he was held on an ICE detainer); Morales v.
Chadbourne, 793 F.3d 208, 223 (1st Cir. 2015) (finding law was clearly established in 2009 that an ICE
agent required probable cause to issue an immigration detainer); Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas Cty.,
No. 3:12-CV-02317-ST, 2014 WL 1414305, at *11 (D. Or. Apr. 11, 2014) (countys custom and practice
of detaining individuals based only on an ICE detainer and without probable cause violates the Fourth
Amendment). See also Moreno v. Napolitano, 213 F. Supp. 3d 999, 100809 (N.D. Ill. 2016)
(immigration officers who issued a detainer without a warrant and made no determination that the subject
of a detainer was likely to escape upon release before a warrant could be obtained exceeded statutory
authority).
5
Frank Main, Dart supports plan to keep warrants from languishing for decades, Chicago Sun-Times,
April 3, 2017, available at http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/dart-supports-bill-to-keep-warrants-from-
languishing-for-decades/.

2
conviction for a nonviolent offense and who poses no threat to the public may be detained and
deported with the cooperation of CPD.6

Inclusion in CPDs gang database is also an invalid basis for CPD to detain a person or assist
ICE enforcement efforts against him. The database is notoriously inaccurate because criteria for
inclusion are not publicly known, and people on the list receive no notice or opportunity to
contest their inclusion. It is therefore unsurprising that the use of the gang database for
immigration purposes is already the subject of litigation. According to a recent lawsuit, Wilmer
Catalan-Ramirez, a devoted father and mechanic who has never belonged to a Chicago street
gang, was arrested and beaten by ICE after it relied upon erroneous information from CPDs
gang database.7 If police can show that any person, including an immigrant, has actually
engaged in unlawful activity, they can subject him to the full force of the criminal law. But the
gang database exemption in the Welcoming City Ordinance allows CPD to disregard normal
criminal justice practices and deliver individuals to ICE based on unproven suspicions about
gang involvement.

Instead of enhancing public safety, these carve-outs hinder law enforcements ability to protect
the public. Law enforcement has long acknowledged the importance of maintaining the
communitys trust. As the Police Foundation reports, this is partly because [w]ithout
[immigrant] cooperation, law enforcement will have difficulty apprehending and successfully
prosecuting criminals, thereby reducing overall public safety for the larger community.8 While
the Welcoming City Ordinance was meant to encourage community trust in and cooperation with
the police, the exemptions undermine that goal. Any immigrant who is a victim or witness to a
crime has good reason to fear cooperation with law enforcement if she has an old conviction or
warrant, if she might mistakenly be listed in the gang database, or if she has family members
who might fall within those categories.

Finally, the exemptions in the Welcoming City Ordinance reinforce the false narrative that
propels the immigration policies of the current administration. This narrative holds that
immigrants, as a group, are so dangerous that the criminal justice system is inadequate to protect
us from them, and they may justifiably be detained and deported without the constitutional
protections that the rest of us enjoy. Chicago must reject that narrative.

6
Nandita Raghuram, Chicago bills itself as a sanctuary city, but advocates worry about limits to
protections for undocumented immigrants, Chicago Reader, January 16, 2017, available at
https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2017/01/16/chicago-bills-itself-as-a-sanctuary-city-but-
advocates-worry-about-limits-to-protections-for-undocumented-immigrants.
7
Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez v. Ricardo Wong, et al., 17-cv-03258, Complaint, available at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwM4wtwR8Yn3VlVGbC1LM3JxQTg/view.
8
Josh Harkinson, Actually, Sanctuary Cities Are Safer, Mother Jones, July 10, 2015, available at
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/sanctuary-cities-public-safety-kate-steinle-san-francisco/
(citing Police Foundation 2009 Report).

3
Chicago must put action behind our words and the values we hold dear as a welcoming city.9
We urge you to eliminate the exemptions in the Welcoming City Ordinance.

Sincerely,

Rebecca K. Glenberg
Senior Staff Attorney

9
Statement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, January 30, 2017, available at
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/trumps-travel-ban-puts-chicago-on-edge/.