‘Stop Lawlessness’: Alderman Proposes Chicago Police Return to Working with Feds to Arrest Illegals

Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot banned the Chicago Police Department from working with federal immigration officials to hold and deport criminal illegals in the Windy City, but now Alderman Ray Lopez wants to reverse that policy to “stop lawlessness” outside Chicago’s migrant shelters.

Lightfoot ran for office pledging to stop the CPD from cooperating with the Dept. of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in gathering up lawbreaking illegals for possible deportment. In 2019, she finally fulfilled that promise and ordered the police to stop its cooperation with immigration officials.

WATCH: Immigrants Make Camp, Scatter Belongings and Trash in Police Stations Around Chicago:

With her ban, Lightfoot said the CPD “will not team up with ICE to detain any resident.” She added, “We have also cut off ICE access from any CPD databases and that will remain permanent. Chicago is and will always be a welcoming city that will never tolerate ICE tearing our families apart.”

But now that the Windy City is beset with thousands of illegals, Southwest Side Ald. Lopez of the 15th District is demanding that recently elected self-professed “progressive” Mayor Brandon Johnson reverse that policy.

Lopez now says that at next week’s Chicago City Council meeting, he plans to propose that “any agent of agency: in the city be allowed to work with the feds to assure public safety,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Lopez wants several specific offenses to be used to trigger such cooperation:

• Gang-related activities “including but not limited to loitering, intimidation and recruitment”
• Drug-related activities including, but not limited to “purchasing, selling and distribution of any substance considered to be illegal” by the Food and Drug Administration
• Prostitution-related activities “including, but not limited to solicitation, performance and human trafficking of adults”
• Sexual crimes involving minors

Lopez proposes that any illegal who has been “convicted of a felony” for any of the above offenses should be handed over to the feds when appropriate.

The alderman added that he started out with 23 cosponsors for his proposal but is down to 19 after the left-wing “progressive” caucus began working to convince members to drop out.

Still, Lopez is undaunted after seeing a huge increase in criminal behavior in and around the many migrant shelters that City Hall has opened in the neighborhoods without consulting local residents.

“As we see more and more criminal activity and more and more anger building up in the neighborhoods for a lack of action, I think we’ll see more people joining in on it,” Lopez explained.

“We’ve seen instances already where, particularly with our newest arrivals, they’re engaging in this kind of behavior,” he said adding that the CPD has no power to stop the problem.

“If you’re gonna allow this kind of behavior, and you have no recourse, then you’re basically welcoming that behavior as well,” he said.

He also noted that the do-gooder policy to prevent police from working with immigration officials was created “before you had tens of thousands of individuals being shipped to our city engaging in this kind of behavior, as we’ve seen at Wadsworth, Piotrowski Park” and all the other shelters.

In a recent meeting, Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) also blasted the weak response to the criminality seen around the shelters. “We are essentially welcoming criminals to our city. … If you are an illegal immigrant and a convicted felon or a fugitive, what better place to go than Chicago?” he said.

Lopez added, “Those that are committed to violence in our neighborhoods should not be given refuge.”

Lopez is not the first alderman to blast City Hall for the terrible conditions cropping up outside shelters.

In July, 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly blasted City Hall for the dangerous conditions a migrant shelter had created in his downtown Ward. Reilly was incensed after the illegals Mayor Johnson stashed in a closed hotel had initiated problems including open drug use, prostitution, human waste, and other serious problems.

There have been many other problems, too. In August, a fight broke out at a migrant shelter only blocks from some of Chicago’s famed institutions including John Marshall Law School, Pritzker Park, and Harold Washington Library.

In addition, after migrants were stashed in police dept. district HQ buildings, several police officers were accused of sexually abusing a migrant girl and getting her pregnant in July. After that incident, City Hall quickly claimed it would stop housing illegals in police stations.

However, a recent series of photos posted to X shows that at least some police stations are still being used as shelters despite City Hall’s claim to have ended the practice.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston