Chicago’s designation as a sanctuary city survived another attempt by a subgroup of alders to roll back some protections for undocumented immigrants in favor of an incoming President Donald Trump administration threatening to treat the city as “ground zero” for mass deportations. On Wednesday, the City Council voted 39-11 to block an effort to amend the Welcoming City Ordinance.
Now, experts and historians say there’s an opportunity for Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration to prioritize equity and healing divisions between new arrivals and longtime Black residents. When droves of migrants arrived in Chicago and were provided resources such as housing, many Black residents saw that act as the new arrivals jumping in front of the decades-long line for basic needs, according to Chicago State University associate history professor Lionel Kimble.
“So I think this gives an opportunity to hit the reset button to be progressive and show his progressivism for all Chicagoans, and not just the newly arriving ones,” Kimble said about Johnson.
Trump’s plans to pause the entry of refugees into the U.S., implement mass deportations, reinstate travel bans and close the U.S. southern border align with similar actions by fascist dictators throughout history, according to Kimble. Following the 2024 election, Trump has made suggestions to using the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.
“Motions to gut migrant and undocumented protection, they’ve always followed and amplified racist, sexist and authoritarian desires,” said Alejandro Ruizesparza, co-director of the Lucy Parsons Labs, a Chicago-based collaboration between data scientists, transparency activists, artists and technologies that challenges the development and use of harmful technology through education, investigation and litigation.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump and right-wing Republicans have employed xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric to marginalize migrants and stoke fears and tensions among the American public. This rhetoric is used as a way to keep the working class in line, according to Kimble.
“‘They’re stealing your jobs.’ They’re making it bad for you, but not saying that the system is already set up against working people,” Kimble said. “So instead of working people rejecting this dominant paradigm of capitalism or worker’s exploitation or political repression, what conservatives and those in power are saying is, ‘Hey, poor people, look at those other folks over there who are coming to take your freedom, to take your job and take your opportunities.’ You make people look over at the immigrant problem, and then all of a sudden, they forget to see how exploited they are already.”
On Wednesday, Johnson reiterated his support for the city’s Welcoming City Ordinance.
“We intend to stand by and protect Chicago’s immigrant communities against threats from ICE. Chicago has always been a welcoming city, both by ordinance and, of course, by the great spirit of Chicago. We have long been a haven for freedom from Eastern European immigrants coming to Chicago for new opportunities during the Industrial Revolution to Black folks coming to the city of Chicago during the Great Migration,” Johnson said. “It’s important, now more than ever, that Chicago remain a haven for people from around the globe.”
Over the last nearly three years, Chicago City Council meetings have become a space where Chicago residents and alders explicitly air out their grievances. Black people in attendance have expressed feelings of neglect as policies centering on migrant care have necessitated an urgent response from public officials.
Simultaneously, thousands of Black immigrants have arrived in Chicago since 2022, but their presence is often overshadowed in conversations about immigration, according to Fasika Alem, programs director at the Woodlawn-based United African Organization (UAO). The organization provides direct services to immigrants, including assistance in accessing public benefits, housing, employment and education.
At least one in three Black immigrants in Chicago are undocumented, Alem said.
“Our communities are here, and we want to help [people] understand some of the commonalities that exist between Black immigrant communities and the broader Black community in Chicago,” she explained.
Alds. William Hall (6th Ward) and Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) were among the 18 Black alders who voted against amending the Welcoming City Ordinance. They echoed Alem’s concerns about the potential risks and harm the amendment would have posed to Black and brown communities if it had passed.
“This is the 2025 version of stop and frisk; everyone would then be a suspect that’s Black and brown,” Hall said. “I don’t want to go backward to live in a city where, just simply because I’m standing next to someone who is of color, we could be questioned, detained and linked to a possible crime organization. I don’t support any of those tactics.”
Taylor compared the proposal to the criminalization of Black bodies during slavery. She noted that formerly enslaved Black people were required to carry freedom papers or certificates of freedom to prove they had the right to move freely.
“They’re not gonna stop and say, ‘let me see your papers,’” she said, referring to the police. “All they’re gonna see is a Black person, or in this case a Latino or Black immigrant, and they’re just gonna take you in. They don’t care if you are guilty or not; being arrested is different than being convicted.”
Implementing stronger protections for undocumented residents and ending existing data-sharing agreements is a step that the city should consider going forward, according to Ruizesparza, who uses they/them pronouns.
Those types of agreements, they explained, involve “partners in the private sector that collect data relevant to criminalizing these politicized bodies here in Chicago, and then go ahead and share it with ICE or DHS (Department of Homeland Security).”
They pointed to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and its former use of the gang database as an example. In 2023, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) voted to eliminate the department’s gang database.
Overall, Ruizesparza would like to see the city permanently end its use of data-sharing agreements and not enter into any new agreements.
“They just provide these loopholes that make it so that ICE is able to just get information on those who are already most harmed, most politicized in the city. So these data-sharing agreements need to be destroyed or maybe torn up,” Ruizesparza explained. “There also needs to be a final commitment by the city to prevent the formation of new data-sharing agreements that bypass the existing ordinance.”
Alem emphasized the importance of the city sharing safety information in languages accessible to Black immigrant communities. She highlighted the addition of Nneka Obasi, a senior community liaison in the city’s Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights, as a positive step toward addressing the needs of Chicago’s Black immigrant communities.
Alem noted that both the Johnson administration and Obasi have made efforts to ensure Black immigrant communities are included in immigration discussions.
“We’re not the face of immigration when we’re thinking about know-your-rights campaigns or how the city disseminates information around resources,” Alem said. “Language becomes a big part of that, so making sure that the city is providing translations of documents and resources in the various languages that our community needs is essential.”
Alem also expressed a desire to expand UAO’s capacity to reach more Black immigrants in other Illinois cities, such as Peoria, the Quad Cities, Champaign and Bloomington.
The State of Illinois recently launched a Black Immigrant Taskforce, which will help shape policies and resources for Black immigrants statewide.
“We’re hoping to use that to inform the state about the needs of Black immigrants and advocate for the resources to support those communities across Illinois,” Alem said. “Part of our work is also building relationships and bridges with organizations that are led by and serve the broader Black communities in the state. This is another way to meet the needs of Black immigrants while also building collective power across Black communities.”
Though Chicago’s designation as a sanctuary city remains intact for now, it is unclear whether the alders who support weakening the Welcoming City Ordinance protections will make another attempt to repeal these protections for undocumented residents.
“The city of Chicago just continues to be a major site of struggle for radical, liberatory politics, and I think that kind of life is inherently antagonistic to these authoritarian wills and desires,” Ruizesparza said.
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