Immigrant Rights Organizations Get Closer to Making Chicago a Welcoming City for All
Press Release
For Release: Wednesday, January 15 2020
Media Contact:
Chaz Lee (HANA Center)
413-884-4850 | chaz@hanacenter.org
Immigrant Rights Organizations Get Closer to Making Chicago a Welcoming City for All
Members of the Chicago Immigration Working Group Vow to Continue the Fight to End Police-ICE Collaboration in 2020
CHICAGO - Undocumented community leaders from the Chicago Immigration Working Group (CIWG) spoke at the City’s press conference following the passage of the Accountability on Communication and Transparency (ACT) Ordinance, summarizing the latest improvements to Chicago’s sanctuary policies while reaffirming the coalition’s commitment to eliminate the remaining exceptions in the Welcoming City Ordinance (WCO).
Members of the CIWG, comprised of dozens of immigrant rights organizations across the city, have continually advocated for improvements to the WCO since 2015. The threat of increased ICE raids in the summer of 2019 further demonstrated the need for the City to act with urgency to strengthen our sanctuary policies. Among other provisions, the ACT Ordinance bars the City of Chicago from sharing any city-maintained databases with federal immigration agencies, prohibits the Chicago Police Department (CPD) from cooperating and aiding in any civil immigration enforcement operations, and also mandates CPD document and report on requests made by federal immigration agencies. However, due to pending federal litigation, exceptions in the WCO that fail to extend City protections to criminalized populations remain intact.
“While the ACT ordinance is an important step towards our goal of making Chicago a true Welcoming City, it falls short of protecting all immigrants, especially those from our most vulnerable and marginalized communities” said Glo Harn Choi, an undocumented immigrant and community organizer at HANA Center. “As the Mayor herself has previously stated, we need to eliminate the ‘carve outs’ or exceptions from the City’s protections that continue to render immigrants from criminalized black and brown communities vulnerable to federal immigration operations.”
“We made an important step towards making Chicago a welcoming city today, but there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done” said Citlalli Bueno, an immigrantion organizer with Enlace Chicago. “We look forward to working with the City as swiftly as possible to get rid of the carve outs and to make Chicago truly a ‘Welcoming City’ not just in name but in substance, where immigrants and their families not only feel welcome but also are safe and can flourish.”
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The Chicago Immigration Working Group is a citywide coalition of immigrant organizations and includes Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago, Access Living, Arab American Action Network, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Black Youth Project 100, HANA Center, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Enlace Chicago, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Organized Communities Against Deportations, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America, Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights, the Latino Union of Chicago, the Jewish Council for Urban Affairs, and Beyond Legal Aid