Grundy County wouldn’t aid ICE in noncriminal deportation cases

Grundy County Sheriff Ken Briley said that in the case of deportation, the sheriff’s office wouldn’t be allowed to aid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless there’s criminal activity involved.

President-elect Donald Trump spent much of his campaign promising wide-ranging deportation of immigrants, although there hasn’t been an in-depth plan brought to the public, according to multiple reports from The Associated Press.

Briley said the laws around immigration would have to change for county and municipal police to get involved.

“If there’s a criminal issue attached to a person who is in the country illegally, then we have the authority to arrest them,” Briley said. “It’s really no different than when the governor issued the mandates on wearing masks and wanted police departments to enforce it. That was a civil issue. It wasn’t criminal. There was no criminal statute that gave us legal authority to enforce it.”

Briley said he doesn’t see a situation where the Grundy County Sheriff’s Office or any of the city departments are stepping in to aid ICE.

“[Gov. JB Pritzker] and [Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson] and several other mayors locally in Illinois have been pretty outspoken that they’re not going to do anything that’s going to disrupt that kind of action in Illinois,” Briley said. “If they were, the state legislators would have to determine if that’s a problem for Illinois and pass a law.”

Briley said that’s the only case in which he could see the police in Illinois aiding ICE, and he doesn’t see it happening.

Morris Police Chief Alicia Steffes said her department isn’t in a place to comment, as there hasn’t been any state- or county-level direction on how law enforcement would handle a federal mandate.

The Associated Press interviewed Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on what mass deportations would look like. Kobach told The AP that a mass deportation plan that removes millions of immigrants isn’t logistically possible, but “once there’s a massive enforcement effort going on, then a lot of people start leaving on their own.”

Trump also called for the end of birthright citizenship, a clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that declares all children born in the country are U.S. citizens. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 and reads as such: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”