In an attempt to thwart scrutiny by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Chicago, City Clerk Anna Valencia (IL-D) removed the illegal alien “sanctuary” city’s online application portal for its CityKey ID program after receiving a subpoena from the agency.
ICE had subpoenaed records of the now-suspended program, which provides identification cards to all residents within the city – including illegal aliens. As noted by the Chicago Tribune, when the CityKey program was first introduced in 2017, it was intended to skirt public records laws by only processing applications in person. Yet, with the spike of illegal aliens in the following years, Chicago created an online portal for the program in order to process applicants.
Documents submitted through this manner cannot be destroyed by the office, due to public records law. But, Chicago officials and local communities were alarmed by the possibility of ICE gaining access to this information, which prompted Valencia to pause the online application.
"I know there's a lot of fear out there, so I want to be very clear that we're going to fight giving over any data to the federal government,” Valencia told the Tribune. “No data was given over to ICE, period, zero, for the CityKey."
Radical noncompliance with the federal government is in line with Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (IL-D) opposition to ICE. Johnson has compared President Trump’s use of ICE to what the country would look like under the Confederacy, stating that “We are seeing it on full display with the way this administration is terrorizing working families across the nation.”
This federal noncompliance and comparison to the Confederacy comes from the state that threatened to use law to fine and arrest church goers during COVID-19, but now fights to defy federal law.
Despite resistance from Chicago’s politicians, ICE is committed to keeping Chicago and all other cities safe, as it did when it captured illegal alien gang members tied to a mass shooting last December.
ICE has not directly responded to the city’s actions. However. ICE’s Chicago office stated on X.com that “Officers with [ICE Chicago], along with federal LE partners are out every day arresting those without a legal basis to be in the U.S.”