Claiming there is “no such thing as absolute immunity in America,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday he plans to make Chicago the first city in the nation to hold Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Border Patrol officers accountable for criminal conduct.
In a defiant address to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Johnson said Chicagoans are “asking us to do more in this moment” to challenge President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions and it is “our aim to meet their expectations” with “even stronger enforcement measures” that he had “not previously considered.”
“This is not about politics. This is about a more fundamental idea that, in our country, nobody is above the law. There is no such thing as absolute immunity in America,” the mayor said. “If you commit a crime, you should be tried like anyone else, regardless of the badge on your chest or the mask on your face.”
Johnson also said that level of accountability should apply to U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino.
“As it relates to Gregory Bovino, we’ve seen examples of other forms of tyranny that have led to concentration camps and the annihilatio … of people groups,” Johnson said during a Q&A session after his speech. “I only elevate that because I don’t want my next response to not be associated with the severity of who he is. And that’s why … the next step that we’re going to have to try — and I’m committed to doing this — [is] how to set up a pathway for somebody like Gregory Bovino to be prosecuted.”
Earlier this week, Johnson called for a coordinated and sustained nationwide protest akin to the Civil Rights Movement in response to the shooting deaths of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Johnson also said he was contemplating measures to hold ICE agents accountable for civil right abuses he believes they have committed on the streets of Chicago, Minneapolis and other U.S. cities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks Sunday at a Downtown rally against the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.
Max Herman/For the Sun-Times
The mayor’s speech Wednesday didn’t reveal much more, but 22nd Ward Ald. Michael Rodriguez, one of the mayor’s staunchest City Council supporters, offered a possible sneak peek into Johnson’s strategy during Tuesday’s hearing on Operation Midway Blitz, one that featured virtual warnings from City Council leaders in the Minneapolis area.
“Post-facist regimes around the world, it is a best practice to hold those perpetrators accountable,” Rodriguez said. “And I hope one day we have rooms like this full with tribunals and prosecutions holding individuals accountable for these great travesties that are occurring in Minneapolis, that have occurred in Chicago.”
The shooting deaths of Good and Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis have touched off a political avalanche that prompted Trump to pull Bovino out of Minneapolis and dispatch border czar Tom Homan in his place.
During an interview Wednesday with WBEZ host Sasha-Ann Simons, rapid responders on the ground here and in the Minneapolis area essentially agreed with Johnson’s call to hold ICE agents accountable. Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago and a rapid responder on the Northwest Side, said there can’t be a return to normalcy in Chicago “without abolishing ICE. Not without going through a serious process of reparation and implementation of justice,” Rivera said.
Johnson said the Minneapolis shootings and the shooting death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE agents in Chicago Sept. 12 have “forced us to look at executive authority in a new way.”
Johnson said he has widened that authority by issuing three executive orders: declaring ICE-free zones; protecting the right to protest and laying out “clear parameters for city departments” in the event of a National Guard or federal troop deployment.
“As mayors, we have the ability to wield executive authority to protect people — if we are willing to exercise it,” the mayor said.
Johnson also talked about Chicago’s ongoing struggle to fend off federal funding cuts in the critical areas of education, transportation, mental health, diversity and environmental justice.
When Trump cut funding to Chicago Public Schools amid complaints about the “Black Student Success Plan,” the mayor said his administration “responded by sending additional dollars to our school system to make up the difference.”
But Johnson said the “hyper-militarized” immigration raids have proved to be the most difficult challenge that Chicago has faced during the second Trump era. It’s a two-part challenge, he said, that includes the “raids themselves” and the protests that followed that have been “met with rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper balls.”
After conferring with the mayors of Los Angeles, Portland, Baltimore, Denver, Oakland, Boston and Minneapolis, “one common thread” emerged: the importance of “know your rights” campaigns to educate people about their constitutional rights.
“We happen to believe that, in the United States, there is no such thing as being ‘too well-educated’ on your rights under our Constitution,” Johnson said.