Will County law enforcement, community leaders brace for Trump immigration crackdown

Sylvia Acosta Chavez, executive director of the Spanish Community Center in Joliet, said the center is addressing with its clients the topic of possible mass deportations and sweeping government roundups of immigrants as promised by the incoming Trump administration.

“People are very scared, very concerned, so we try to reassure them at least,” Acosta Chavez said. “When it comes to deportation, it’s a very complicated issue. We want to make sure they are always aware of their rights.”

The Spanish Community Center serves “Latinos, immigrants and low-income people through educational and social services,” according to its website.

Acosta Chavez said laws are already in place at the state level that prohibit any local law enforcement officer from detaining a person based on immigration status.

“They are not able to detain you and then contact [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mission] to come and pick you up," she said.

In fact, a new law in 2024 allows undocumented immigrants to replace their temporary visitor driver’s license with a standard driver’s license, so the undocumented immigrant’s driver’s license could “look like anybody else’s,” Acosta Chavez said.

“That’s something we’ve encouraged,” Acosta Chavez said.

Still, people with criminal backgrounds are often prioritized for deportation, she said. So if people want to avoid deportation, they should “stay out of trouble as much as possible,” she said.

What if someone is detained?

“Unfortunately, we don’t have an immigration attorney on staff,” Acosta Chavez said. “The best we can do is to connect them with some of our partners who do and can provide them with those resources.”

The Spanish Community Center is planning to host several workshops in partnership with several other organizations. Topics may include immigrant rights, professional development and the process of becoming a citizen.

“When it comes to citizenship, we are consistently promoting it through our immigration programs,” Acosta Chavez said, “more so in recent months.”

But the process of becoming a U.S. citizen is “very, very complicated” – and not all immigrants are eligible right now to start the process, Acosta Chavez said. But that doesn’t mean the Spanish Community Center is unable to help them.

The Spanish Community Center has a number of services already in place, such as the Immigrant Family Resource Program, which helps immigrants with services and referrals to “get stable and solidified in the community,” Acosta Chavez said.

“We’re trying to ramp up immigrations service in general,” Acosta Chavez said. “Still, most of the calls we’ve been getting are regarding, ‘What if?’”

And she understands that the thought of deportation is “scary and intimidating,” especially to families with mixed status, she said.

“But until the new president takes office, there’s no way for us to exactly know how to prepare or what to anticipate,” Acosta Chavez said.

So far, the city of Joliet and Joliet Township said they have no specific plans for reacting to any federal mass deportation and detention actions that may come.

Law enforcement: No plans on enforcement efforts

Officials with Will County Sheriff Mike Kelley’s office, the Joliet Police Department and the Lockport Police Department said they have no plans on whether they’ll participate in any immigration enforcement efforts, which they are prohibited from doing under the Illinois TRUST Act.

“We’re not actively going to be involved in any of that,” Lockport Police Chief Rich Harang said at a December City Council meeting. “Things could change, but so far we’ve not heard anything that looks like it would directly impact us locally. If anything happens, it would likely impact Chicago more, and maybe we would see those effects trickle down.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has pledged Chicago will be “ground zero” for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Trump promised on his first day in office that he will “launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.”

Joliet and Lockport were two cities in Illinois that who saw buses of migrants arrive in late December 2023, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered migrants to be transported to northern Democrat-run cities during what he described as a crises on the U.S. southern border. Will County officials coordinated with Chicago and state officials to get the migrants safely to centers in Chicago.

As of Wednesday, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow’s office has not responded to inquiries on its plans regarding immigration enforcement with Trump’s second term on the horizon.

Local law enforcement in Illinois is prohibited from participating in immigration enforcement under the Illinois TRUST Act, according to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office.

But the law does not limit local law enforcement from “executing their duties in investigating violations of criminal law,” Raoul’s officials said Tuesday.

“Rather, it reiterates that civil immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, not local or state law enforcement in Illinois,” Raoul’s officials said.

The sheriff’s office has been the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit filed in 2023 by Norberto Salvador Navarro accusing officials of violating the Illinois TRUST Act.

Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Kathy Hoffmeyer said that “if or until” there are changes in immigration enforcement put into place, “federally or by the state,” the office will make the “lawful decisions” or changes at the time.

“We cannot and will not speculate on what might happen or how this may be implemented,” Hoffmeyer said.

Navarro’s 2023 lawsuit alleged that Illinois sanctuary laws were violated by the sheriff’s office, two deputies and a former prosecutor, who has since become a Will County judge.

Navarro was the key witness in a 2022 trial of Sean Woulfe, who was charged with a 2017 crash that killed a pregnant woman and her three children. Although the trial led to a hung jury, Woulfe later pleaded guilty to reckless homicide of the victims.

Attorneys for Navarro said he was placed in immigration removal proceedings by ICE because of a drug conspiracy conviction.

Before Woulfe’s trial began, Navarro was transferred from ICE custody to the Will County jail and held there on a $1 million material witness bond to secure his testimony.

Navarro’s federal lawsuit alleged that a former prosecutor and a deputy arranged to have Navarro transferred back to ICE custody in “blatant violation” of the Illinois TRUST Act and that Navarro was unlawfully detained in the county jail.

In a March 17 letter to Raoul, 16 state lawmakers and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly accused Glasgow’s office of violating Illinois law by entering an agreement with ICE to detain Navarro.

Former Glasgow spokeswoman Carole Cheney said his office was not assisting with any actions by federal officials to deport Navarro. She said Glasgow “used his discretion to sign a U-Visa application,” which allows victims of certain crimes to stay in the U.S.

Navarro’s attorney, Nicole Hallett, said Will County officials treated Navarro “worse than the person that they were prosecuting for reckless homicide.”

At the dawn of Trump’s first term in office in 2017, several hundred people packed Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Joliet to ask city officials questions about immigration enforcement in the wake of Trump’s executive orders.

Former Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk and former Police Chief Brian Benton said city police have no role and do not question people’s immigration status, and they have no control of the federal government to enforce immigration laws.

At the time, O’Dekirk said Joliet does not intend to become a sanctuary city, which are cities that do not cooperate with the federal government on enforcing immigration laws.