So notorious is the cooperation between local police and federal immigration agents that some in Chicago’s Hispanic community have even coined a term for it.
“Poli-migra” – a fusion of the Spanish words for “police” and “migration” – denotes a monolithic law enforcement body, a joint venture of the Chicago Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that violates the city’s decades-old sanctuary policy.
But city and Cook County officials say they can’t find any record of a public employee ever having been punished for violating the policy. And those in Chicago’s immigrants-rights community say violations are difficult to prove.
“Every other day there’s somebody that says, ‘You know, this police officer called [ICE],” said Jorge Mujica, an immigrants-rights activist. “But we don’t have a particularly strong case because pretty much everything is hearsay.”
In 1986, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order that barred city employees from helping enforce federal immigration laws. The city council buttressed that with an ordinance in 2006, and the next year, the Cook County Board passed a similar resolution that governed county employees.
During the summer of 2008, Mujica and other activists from Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Catholic Mission brought 59 complaints against the Chicago Police Department. The complaints alleged that Chicago police were tipping off ICE agents when they arrested illegal immigrants, in violation of the city’s sanctuary ordinance.
After a hearing before the City Council’s Human Relations Committee, Police Superintendent Jody Weis vowed to fire any officers who violated the ordinance.
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Thirty of the complaints were found to be baseless, but Mujica said he never heard back about the other 29.
“They felt obligated to have a public hearing, but then they didn’t act on it,” Mujica said.
A Chicago police spokeswoman said the department doesn’t keep track of how many complaints – if any – it has received relating to sanctuary ordinance violations. She did not respond to several inquiries about the 29 complaints in question.
Indeed, none of the city- or county-level departments charged with investigating such complaints could produce any record of ever having received one.
Cook County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado (D-Chicago), who sponsored the county resolution, said the county lacks the authority to prosecute alleged violations.
He also said undocumented immigrants are hesitant to come forward.
“You feel intimidated dealing with the criminal justice system whether you are legal or not,” Maldonado said. “It creates even more a sense of anxiety if you are undocumented.”