Understanding Pritzker’s Dangerous Immigration Game

Border Patrol agents on the East Side of Chicago faced an angry mob this week after executing a “precision immobilization technique” (PIT) maneuver on a vehicle with two suspected illegal aliens. That common border law-enforcement technique is apparently more novel in Chi-town, but in any event it’s just the latest clash between immigration officers and protestors, seemingly egged on by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker — an aspiring 2028 Democratic presidential candidate (catch the wink at the 24 second mark).

Here’s the governor’s apparent immigration enforcement gambit for those playing along at home.

J.B. Pritzker

Pritzker won his first gubernatorial election in 2018, defeating then-incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner by a country mile.

It was his first electoral victory (he finished third in a race for the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ 9^th congressional district in 1998), but he had plenty of other successes before taking the helm in the Land of Lincoln, serving as a partner in Pritzker Private Capital, a venture firm.

Venture capitalists provide seed money for promising high growth ideas and can best be thought of as consummate risk-takers.

Of course, it’s easy to be a consummate risk-taker when, like Pritzker, you’re “an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune” with a net worth of $3.9 billion, at least according to Forbes.

An Early Start

Days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Pritzker told MSNBC’s Joy Reid he was “going to do everything [he could] to protect our undocumented immigrants”, arguing the president-elect’s then-nascent “mass deportation plan ‘looks like it may be unconstitutional’”, while warning that he and other like-minded governors had attorneys general ready to push back.

By December, however, he claimed he was willing to parley with Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan on the removal of “convicted violent criminals” while reaffirming his “obligation to protect” other illegal migrants in his state.

To be fair, Homan took the first swing, telling attendees at a Chicago GOP event on December 10 their city “is in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks”.

That said, Homan also welcomed the assistance of Democratic state leaders in Illinois, asking them to “Help us protect you.” He continued: “Please. But if you don’t, get the hell out of the way.”

By the time the inauguration festivities were heating up, Pritzker’s rhetoric was as well. As per the Chicago South Side Weekly on January 16:

Illinois lawmakers in predominantly Latinx communities vow to stand up for their constituents against President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans.

…

Governor J.B. Pritzker indicated he would oppose any Trump policies that hurt Illinoisans at risk. “To anyone who intends to come, take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” Pritzker said. “You come for my people, you come through me.”

“Violent Criminals Have No Place on Our Streets”

On January 21, Pritzker complained the new administration wasn’t sharing its ICE enforcement plans, while striking a slightly less-confrontational tone: “I want criminals off the streets, and law enforcement officers to do their jobs. … Undocumented people who are law-abiding and holding down jobs shouldn’t be arrested just because they’re undocumented.”

ICE’s plans quickly became apparent as Chicago was one of the earliest targets for the agency’s efforts, with 10 “teams of about 10 federal agents apiece fann[ing] out across the city” on January 27, netting about 100 arrests.

By early March, ICE was targeting 300 aliens in a separate operation in Chicago, and advocates were alleging the agency was engaged in “illegal” warrantless arrests.

Pritzker testified before the House Oversight Committee at a sanctuary jurisdiction hearing on June 12, again averring that “violent criminals have no place on our streets, and if they are undocumented, I want them out of Illinois and out of our country” but at the same time arguing: “Law-abiding, hardworking, tax-paying people who have been in this country for years should have a path to citizenship.”

“Operation Midway Blitz”

Then, came “Operation Midway Blitz”, a massive ICE operation that DHS contended on September 8 is targeting “criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets”.

By October 1, DHS claimed Midway Blitz had resulted in the arrests of “more than 800 illegal aliens — including the ‘worst of the worst’”.

Among those arrested were a Salvadoran national with convictions for statutory rape and fraud; an Austrian “convicted of sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, numerous sexual predator in a public park offenses [and] child sex offender loitering” and pending charges for “murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor”; a Polish national facing charges for “strongarm aggravated assault against a family member”; and a Mexican national with a conviction for “armed robbery with a firearm”.

ICE Protests Erupt

Two weeks later, arrests topped 1,500, but Midway Blitz has also triggered protests (some violent). Those in the assembled throngs apparently share the governor’s dim view of immigration enforcement.

During a September 10 appearance on NPR’s “Morning Edition”, Pritzker asserted:

You think they [immigration officers are] questioning them [aliens]? Because that’s not what any of us are seeing in any of the bystander videos that have been made. People are being grabbed. … You shouldn’t have to walk around with papers the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany to prove that you belong and that you’re not one of them. And that is essentially the kind of country that we’re becoming.

Basing conclusions on “bystander videos” is a questionable practice, but regardless it’s not the first time Pritzker employed Third-Reich era analogies when attacking policies he disagrees with.

During his “State of the State” address in February, the governor proclaimed:

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

…

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities — once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends — After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face — what comes next?

…

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control. [Emphasis added.]

I should note Pritzker preferenced those remarks with “I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly”, though maybe he should try reading his old transcripts.

The ICE Broadview Processing Facility

Many of those ICE protests have occurred near an agency processing facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, which the Wall Street Journal has described as “a local epicenter of protest against the White House immigration policy”.

“Protesters chant and shout at ICE officials — and some have tried to stop vehicles from getting in and out of the facility in the village of 7,800,” the Journal reports, while the protestors in turn complain that officers have engaged in “unprovoked violence toward them”, including using tear gas and pepper balls.

In a September 26 letter to Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons asserted his Broadview facility “continues to face violence and unlawful activity by rioters … just days after the armed attack on an ICE facility in Dallas, where officers were targeted for simply carrying out their duties”.

“Against that backdrop”, Lyons complained, “chants of ‘shoot ICE’ and physical attempts to breach the Broadview facility cannot be dismissed as peaceful protest”.

In response to the situation, the president federalized about 500 National Guard troops and directed them to Illinois, “to protect [ICE] and other U.S. Government personnel who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property”.

Judge April Perry’s Order

On October 6, Illinois sued, over use of the Guard, and four days later U.S. district court Judge April Perry issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking both the federalization of those troops and their deployment.

Her decision turned on her reading of 10 U.S.C. § 12406, which permits the president to call the National Guard into federal service in response to “danger of invasion by a foreign nation”, “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States”, or when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States”.

She concluded that “deployment of National Guard members is likely to lead to civil unrest, requiring deployment of state and local resources to maintain order”, which in my mind is akin to an aggressor telling his victim, “Look what you made me do.”

More saliently, however, Judge Perry found the “balance of harms” tipped in the state’s interest, as “State and local police have indicated that they are ready, willing, and able to keep the peace as ICE continues its operations in Chicago.”

DOJ requested a stay, and on October 11, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an order staying the TRO to the extent it enjoined the federalization of National Guard troops while maintaining the district court’s order blocking their deployment.

That’s half a loaf for Trump, and it’s stuck in the bread box.

“The Tables Will Turn One Day”

On October 12, Pritzker appeared for an interview with Fox 32, the network’s local affiliate in Chicago, and directed an implicit threat at DHS officials who are involved in the migrant crackdown there:

The tables will turn one day. … These people should recognize that maybe they’re not gonna get prosecuted today, although we’re looking at doing that, but they may get prosecuted after the Trump administration because the statute of limitations would not have run out.

Ironically, the governor continued:

The President of the United States is causing mayhem in the grounds of our state. He is going after his political opponents. I don’t know why anybody would look at the situation and not recognize he’s moving toward an authoritarian regime in his own image.

I say “ironically” because on the one hand the governor is threatening to prosecute his perceived “opponents” in immigration enforcement and on the other he’s complains that Trump’s doing the same thing.

Pritzker’s Apparent Gambit

This clip from CNN shows protestors clashing with officers at the ICE Broadview Processing Center on October 12, two days after Judge Perry issued her TRO.

Expand it and you can see the officers in question, with the riot helmets and the billy clubs, are Illinois State Police troopers, logically deployed to that location by the agency’s director, Brendan F. Kelly, or one of Director Kelly’s deputies.

Note that the director of the Illinois State Police “is appointed by the Governor and serves as a member of the Governor’s Cabinet”. In other words, Kelly works directly for Pritzker.

Follow the sequence: (1) Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker promises to do everything possible to “protect our undocumented immigrants” from Trump’s ICE enforcement; (2) he (at least) twice analogizes Trump’s ICE enforcement to the Third Reich; (3) protests against Trump’s ICE enforcement — some violent — break out on the streets of Illinois; (4) Trump calls out the National Guard to protect ICE enforcement; (5) Pritzker sues Trump to prevent his use of the National Guard; (6) a judge blocks National Guard deployment in part because “State … police have indicated that they are ready, willing, and able to keep the peace”; and (7) Illinois troopers, at the behest of Pritzker and/or his subordinates clash with the protestors at ground zero for Trump’s Chicago ICE enforcement efforts.

That Fox 32 report on the governor’s interview includes the following virtual exchange:

Pritzker has also drawn the ire of Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. Bovino says Pritzker is contributing to an elevated threat environment against federal agents, calling them things like “jack-booted thugs,” but Pritzker says — if the shoe fits.

Technically, Bovino is a commander at large for the Border Patrol, but he’s on the ground in Chicago and knows better what he’s talking about than national outlets.

It’s hard not to agree with Bovino and view Gov. Pritzker’s public statements, including that last one, as anything other than egging on the very protestors he’s then sending his troopers to keep in line. Nothing suggests he wants street opposition to end, but he plainly doesn’t want it to devolve to the point that would legally justify (by Seventh Circuit standards) Trump in calling out the National Guard.

The governor is playing a dangerous game in a heightened environment, risking serious injury or death to protestors, troopers, and federal officers. Even consummate risk-takers should know when the human costs are just too high.