A left-leaning voters’ rights group that has pushed for President Donald Trump’s removal from office over alleged constitutional abuses is now asking Illinois officials to investigate and prosecute alleged violations of state law by federal immigration enforcement agents deployed in “Operation Midway Blitz.”
In letters sent this week to Gov. JB Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, all three of whom are Democrats, and Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling, the Free Speech for People campaign contends “federal agents have repeatedly committed criminal acts that are not immunized by federal law.”
“We applaud you for establishing the Illinois Accountability Commission and empowering it to refer” violations to agencies empowered to investigate and enforce such laws, the group’s letter to Pritzker says about the governor’s creation of the new panel last week. “Although the executive order establishing the commission requires it to create an initial status report by Jan. 16, we encourage the commission to immediately refer serious incidents for further investigation by relevant law enforcement officers.”
So far, that doesn’t appear to be on Pritzker’s agenda.
Last week, even after U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche tagged Pritzker in a social media post threatening legal action against California officials if they proceeded with the arrest of federal immigration agents who violate state laws, the Illinois governor said that was not something he or other Illinois officials had called for.
“That’s nothing we’ve suggested would happen,” Pritzker said Friday at an unrelated news conference in the West Town community area. “What we have suggested, though, is that we keep records and that eventually the Congress will hold people accountable. That’s probably the first thing that could happen because there’s an election in 2026.”
Nevertheless, the group cited a list of alleged criminal violations by aggressive immigration enforcement officers, particularly outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Broadview, and urged quick investigatory work by Raoul, Burke and Snelling, though Snelling’s jurisdiction is limited to the city of Chicago.
“These actions include planned operations to detain both citizens and noncitizen residents for hours, unlawfully damage and destroy residents’ property, unlawfully kidnap residents and terrorize communities of color on account of their race and in retaliation for their perceived political affiliation,” the letter to law enforcement officials stated. It was written by the group’s president, John Bonifaz, and its legal counsel.
“These operations, which public evidence indicates are part of a criminal conspiracy directed and condoned by President Donald Trump and senior officials of the Trump administration with full knowledge of their unlawful nature, warrant prompt investigation by your offices,” the letter said.
Free Speech for People was founded in 2010 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that allowed corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on political campaigns. But the group also was behind efforts in several states, including Illinois, to try to deny Trump access to last year’s ballots over his role in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that individual states did not have the power to invoke the federal Insurrection Act’s ban on holding public office.
During his second term, the group has continued to call for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.
Citing sometimes violent altercations between Border Patrol agents and protesters, the group noted that Illinois law criminalizes conspiracy against civil rights against those who “inflict harm on any other person” or threaten “physical harm on any other person” if done “with the intent to interfere with the free exercise of any right or privilege secured by” the federal and state constitutions and federal and state law.
While immunity from state prosecution exists under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, it is “not available in all circumstances and does not preclude criminal investigation,” the group wrote.
Federal courts have ruled that the Supremacy Clause “is designed to ensure that states do not ‘retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control’ the execution of federal law,” the group wrote. But, it added, such immunity “does not protect federal officers who act outside the law or beyond what is subjectively and objectively necessary and proper. When they do either, they may be held criminally liable in state court for violating state laws.”
Moreover, the group urged Raoul, Burke and Snelling to investigate “the criminal liability” of senior White House aides and Trump himself, “given the orchestrated nature of the raids.”
“The brutality and illegality of these operations is a feature, not a bug; they are designed to crush dissent and spread fear among President Trump’s perceived enemies and marginalized communities,” the group wrote.
Raoul and Snelling’s offices had no immediate response to the letter.
At a budget hearing with Cook County commissioners on Wednesday, O’Neill Burke acknowledged the “thuggish behavior” of federal agents that was causing “irreparable harm to the trust the community has with law enforcement,” but maintained that “the federal system is responsible for arresting and prosecuting all federal agents.”
“We do not have the ability to investigate … but we will, if and when charges are brought forward to us, we will evaluate them the same way we do every other case,” she said.
She said it was up to the U.S. attorney’s Law Enforcement Accountability Division to determine if an agent “has exceeded the boundaries of what they are allowed to do within their capacity … and the federal government will govern their own.”
“I wish I could say we have all of these options. We have no options,” she said.
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(Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig and Dan Petrella contributed.)
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