Illinois Is a Sanctuary State, But Cops & Prosecutors Still Secretly Work with ICE: Injustice Watch

We speak to journalist Aura Bogado, whose new investigation into Illinois law enforcement and prosecutorial collaboration with ICE has revealed that dozens of immigrants have been arrested and deported with the help of local officials in violation of the state’s sanctuary law. “Those are 150 individuals whose lives were very often changed, communities completely split apart,” says Bogado about her reporting. She further explains that while “there are constitutional rights for everybody, that [are] afforded to every person, … those rights are suspended in the immigration context. The bar that is needed to prove a case for deportability is so much lower.” Transcript ANJALI KAMAT: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Anjali Kamat in New York, with Juan González in Chicago. In more than a third of counties in the state of Illinois, local police, sheriffs and even prosecutors have collaborated with federal immigration agents, leading to the detention and deportation proceedings of at least 150 people since President Trump returned to office, despite a state law barring the practice. Details of these secretive partnerships have been revealed in two new sweeping investigations by reporter Aura Bogado of Injustice Watch. As part of her investigation, Aura Bogado obtained police bodycam footage from April 2025, when Riverton, Illinois, police officer Brad Herzog pulled over 31-year-old Guatemalan national Daniel Torrez Perez. Herzog ran Torrez’s name through a law enforcement database. Then Herzog’s phone rang. It was the FBI. BRAD HERZOG: Hello. FBI AGENT: Officer, how are you? BRAD HERZOG: Good. How are you? FBI AGENT: Good, man. Hey, my central dispatch, or the FBI central dispatch — BRAD HERZOG: FBI. FBI AGENT: — just called me up saying that every bell and whistle went off, saying you ran Daniel Torrez Perez. Did you happen to have just encountered him? BRAD HERZOG: Yes, I’ve got him on a traffic stop right now. FBI AGENT: I’m sorry, you broke up. Can you say that again? BRAD HERZOG: I have him on a traffic stop right now. FBI AGENT: I’ll be honest with you, sir. I know that you — this puts you in a weird bind. I know that he has a ICE warrant, which is what I was helping them out on, but I know you can’t act on that. But I was under the impression he also had a state bench warrant. BRAD HERZOG: OK, let me — let me check and confirm it. Sangamon 734. Sir? FBI AGENT: Yeah, I can hear you. BRAD HERZOG: OK, yeah, everybody missed it. I don’t see how, but, yeah, there is an active warrant for him for DUI, no bond. So, he will be going to — FBI AGENT: And that’s — I need that guy for an ICE warrant, but — BRAD HERZOG: OK. FBI AGENT: But I think you can take him under the state warrant, and that would hold him overnight in Sangamon, correct? BRAD HERZOG: That is correct, sir. ANJALI KAMAT: For more, we go to Chicago, where we’re joined by Aura Bogado, senior immigration reporter at Injustice Watch. Her two new investigations out today are titled “Illinois promised to protect immigrants. Local officials helped deport them anyway,” co-published with The Intercept, and “The county prosecutors who became ICE informants,” co-published with Wired. Aura, welcome back to Democracy Now! Astounding investigation, incredible revelations. Talk about the role of cops, sheriffs and prosecutors in sharing information with federal immigration agents in Illinois, a state that’s supposed to be a sanctuary state. I mean, the TRUST Act expressly prohibits this, or so one would expect. How is this collaboration happening? And is it legal? AURA BOGADO: Yeah, those are great questions. Thanks for having me, Anjali. You know, part of the reason that I came to Chicago was to really investigate how much of not only the TRUST Act, but the many promises that are made by the state’s leaders to its immigrant communities and to residents at large about protecting these communities was true. And what I found was a pattern over and over and over again. As you mentioned, in more than one in three counties, an agency, whether that’s a police department, a sheriff’s department or even a county prosecutor, has worked with federal immigration officials to flag, detain and deport at least 150 people. Those are 150 individuals whose lives were very often changed, you know, communities completely split apart. I’ve spent a lot of time not only, you know, going through records and paperwork and talking to the law enforcement side of this, but also with families. I’ve talked with more than 20 people who, you know, were in these records. A lot of them have been deported, mostly to Central America, and with their families. You know, this week, I think, you know, in a lot of our families, kids are going back to school, whether that’s pre-K or college. And I’ve been talking with children sort of this whole year, and sometimes they contact me when they miss their dad, because mostly the people who have been affected are overwhelmingly men. There are some women, but it’s overwhelmingly men. And their children miss them particularly at a time of change, you know, in the fall, not only here in Chicago, but throughout Illinois. In terms of what is and isn’t legal, you know, it probably doesn’t surprise a lot of people to know that law enforcement agents, you know, police and and sheriff’s deputies, continue to work with ICE. What was surprising to me, and, I think, to a lot of people that I spoke with, is that county prosecutors, who are prosecuting defendants for a variety of, you know, misdemeanor crimes and also more serious felony crimes, get in contact with ICE agents and often flag someone who wasn’t already on ICE’s radar, resulting in deportation. Sometimes the only reason that they reach out to ICE is because they say, for example, “This person is homeless,” or “This person doesn’t speak English.” You know, they have no premise to even know what a person’s immigration status is, but they continue to reach out to ICE here, here in Illinois. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aura, what was surprising to me — I mean, there was a lot in your reporting on this that was really shocking, but this almost, like, real-time communication between the local police on a traffic stop and and ICE, and in other words, federal authorities almost monitoring what’s going on, because, clearly, in many of these so-called sanctuary states, there’s a big difference between what happens in the major cities and what happens in the more rural areas. In Illinois, for instance, Chicago is very different than downstate Illinois, the prosecutors and the police in those parts of the state. But this whole issue of how closely interlocked the ICE and federal authorities are with local police, could you talk about that a little more? AURA BOGADO: Sure. Prior to doing this reporting, I knew that, you know, there’s sort of these data loopholes. If someone is booked into custody, a fingerprint will absolutely make its way to ICE, and ICE will try and do what it can to apprehend that person. What surprised me, and, you know, as we all saw in that video — and that’s not the only example of it that we have — is that when someone is pulled over and an officer enters that name into dispatch, the dispatch then sends it to the Illinois State Police, which sends it to the FBI. The FBI then sends it to DHS. That’s where ICE can sort of see that a person is there, and then the information that ICE may have. An administrative, you know, request, administrative warrant, administrative detainer request, is then routed all the way back to that officer in real time. And that can prove very consequential. The person who was pulled over in the video that we just saw, Daniel, he was deported a few months after that incident. He was never able to go back home to his family in Illinois. And, you know, so, it’s — the stakes are really, really high. I also assumed that, you know, outside of Chicago, it would look very different. We have found here in Cook County that there are a lot of incidents that are similar. For example, in Tinley Park, which is here in Cook County — it’s a little ways from Chicago, but, you know, you can take a train there, you can drive over there — there are officers who also interacted with immigration agents in real time. They didn’t detain the person on site, but they provided crucial information to immigration agents, including, for example, when and where a person was working, their home address — in one incident, a mother’s name. And so, it’s a lot of personal data that one would imagine wouldn’t be shared because of the statutes that we have here in Illinois and, again, the many promises that, for example, our Governor JB Pritzker has made to these communities. But it continues to happen. And it does happen, like you said, in real time. And the consequences are really, really detrimental for families. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and I wanted to ask you about that, this whole — has there been any response from Governor Pritzker or the Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly to some of the stuff that you’ve found? Did you attempt to reach the governor’s office? AURA BOGADO: I did. I did. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from Governor Pritzker’s office. I also didn’t hear back from Brendan Kelly. Brendan Kelly is the director of the Illinois State Police. He is handpicked by JB Pritzker. And so, what happens in his office, you know, comes down, in some ways, from the top. He serves in Pritzker’s Cabinet, and so, you know, he enjoys that position. But the Illinois State Police, Brendan Kelly did not get back to me, and neither did JB Pritzker. Unfortunately, you know — I don’t know — more than 60 offices or so did not respond to my many requests for comment. I took a long time working on this investigation, and I made sure that these agencies had plenty of time to respond. Unfortunately, Pritzker’s office didn’t. ANJALI KAMAT: And, Aura, you know, your piece for Wired has this incredible story about prosecutors, local prosecutors, sharing information with federal immigration agents. And it’s unclear whether they are covered by Illinois law. Is that right? Talk about the scale at which this is happening, and also tell the story of the person you profile in that story, Rolando Perez Samayoa. AURA BOGADO: Yeah. So, in one in six Illinois counties, I found evidence that county prosecutors are indeed sharing information with ICE and federal immigration agents. It essentially happens in one of two ways. Sometimes they will respond. A staffer or even the elected state county prosecutor here in Illinois will respond to a request either from an immigration court, an ICE agent, etc. They very often send, you know, different police records, information about when and where to find someone. But oftentimes we found that these staffers, these assistant prosecutors and even the county prosecutors themselves will reach out to ICE. No one has to ask. The information is turned over. Some of what’s shared there, for example, is when and where someone will be released from jail, when someone will appear at court. And again, these are the very defendants that their own offices are trying. Something important to remember is that, you know, when someone is accused of a crime, no matter how big or small in the United States, there are constitutional rights for everybody, that is afforded to every person, right? Those rights are suspended in the immigration context. The bar that is needed to sort of prove a case for deportability is so much lower. You’re also not afforded counsel as you are in a criminal case. And so, the rights just could not be more different. They’re really on different ends of the spectrum. And in the case that I write about Rolando Samayoa, he was in a DUI. He, you know, told me that it’s like one of his biggest regrets in life. He felt very, very bad about it. The first time we talked, he told me, you know, “I moved to Illinois because it’s supposed to be a sanctuary.” He was originally going to go to Alabama and heard from social media, from friends and from family that this is the place to be. This is the place that was going to keep someone like him and his family safe. Instead, what happened was an assistant prosecutor in the county in which he was a defendant reached out to a Homeland Security agent and shared a lot of details. You know, the agent’s first response was, like, “OK, we’re on it.” Later, he asked for more details. Three weeks after that assistant prosecutor reached out to this Homeland Security agent, Rolando’s home was raided. He was coming out. He had just had a birthday, and he was supposed to celebrate, and he was going out to dinner. Soon as he stepped out, ICE agents sort of surrounded him. His son saw this happening and was, like, coming forward. ICE agents perceived that as some kind of threat and aimed eight guns at this child, a 17-year-old. And, you know, you can imagine what kind of trauma for anyone, you know, could incur from something like that. Again, this is a child. ICE did not deny that that happened, and instead, you know, issued a statement about how it uses force and in what kinds of situations. And, you know, within a couple of hours, they were taken out of Illinois and to a St. Louis immigration office. Rolando has told me that he felt incredible pressure to sign a voluntary departure. They were put on a plane to El Paso and spent a night there. The very next day, they were walked over to Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. And they had to raise the money to head back to Chiapas, which is their native state. And again, those are the consequences. You can have someone who, you know, makes a mistake, you know, is in a DUI, is trying to do his part to rectify what happened, and, you know, unbeknownst to him — he always thought it could be like police that was looking out for him. For some reason, he didn’t get on ICE’s radar, it appears, until this assistant prosecutor let Homeland Security know. ANJALI KAMAT: Aura Bogado, we’ll have to leave it there. AURA BOGADO: And he was deported later. ANJALI KAMAT: Thank you so much for joining us and for this work, senior immigration reporter at Injustice Watch. We’ll link to your two new investigations. Coming up, “Incarcerated for Life in Trump’s War on the Left.” Stay with us. [break] ANJALI KAMAT: “Love’s Got a Hold” by Alicia Anderson and Laurence Hobbs. Media Options