March 10 Updates
National
Congressional Oversight Committee Hearing on Sanctuary Cities:
Mayor Brandon Johnson, Mayor Johnston (Denver), Mayor Wu (Boston), and Mayor Adams (NYC) testified for 6 hours before Congress on Wednesday, March 5th.
If you don’t have enough Republicans spewing vitriol in your life and you’d like to spend 6 hours enraged at racists, you can watch the whole hearing via the Associated Press video here
Mayor Johnson did better than many of us had anticipated, thank goodness! He stood firm in his defense of Chicago’s Sanctuary City policies, and repeatedly referenced the data on crime going down in the city since he has taken office.
Important to note: the DOJ had already filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago, Cook County, and the state of IL due to claiming that our Sanctuary Policies “interfere with and discriminate” against the federal government’s immigration enforcement.
To read more coverage of the hearing, please see articles from Block Club Chicago, Truthout, AP News, and the Sun-Times
To read NIJC’s statement for the record to the House Oversight Committee, click here
Many important bills are coming up for a vote in the house and senate:
HR 32: No bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act
Brandon Johnson is set to testify March 3 - it’s highly likely they will want to delay the vote on this until they “embarrass” Chicago
Make sure to contact your representatives to express how important this bill is to you
More info in articles from Raise the Floor Alliance and Immigration Impact
Would codify protections for sensitive locations (churches, hospitals, schools) against immigration enforcement
Sen Duckworth and Sen Durbin are already co-sponsors of this bill – please let your friends from other states know how important this is.
As for the House, Rep. Sorensen (17th District) and Rep Budzinski (13th District) here in IL are the Congresspeople we need to target to get their support.
House Budget Reconciliation - long process that will likely be embattled and argued extensively
Sign on to the letter from NIJC telling Congress to oppose massive cuts to essential community and family services, which will directly impact millions of Americans.
Call your representatives directly to emphasize the importance of protecting the American people instead of giving billionaires more tax breaks.
The budget resolution has already passed the Senate – it’s even more important now to lean on our Congresspeople to block these funding cuts.
Read more on AP News Here
Please see this very helpful GUIDE from the Latino Policy Forum on who to call, what to say, and summaries of each bill.
USCIS will issue a new form to implement enhanced screening and vetting standards pursuant to section 2 of the EO “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats." The form will collect 24 data elements, including information about an applicant's family members (parents, spouse, siblings, and children), including the names, telephone numbers. dates of birth and residence(s) of family members. The new form will be used with 9 current USCIS applications, including naturalization, asylum, registration for permanent residence and adjustment of status, travel documents, refugee/asylee relative petitions.
Starting March 3, 2025, the public will have 60 days to comment on the proposed changes
On February 25, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new scheme, the Alien Registration Requirement, requiring all noncitizens in the United States to register. The announcement lists categories of people, who are deemed to already be registered: people who have green cards, parole, I‑94s, visas, EADs or Border Crossing Cards, anyone in removal proceedings, anyone who has filed a form associated with lawful permanent residence, and anyone who has been fingerprinted for another benefit such as DACA or Temporary Protected Status.
read more details here from the National Law Review
We cannot give official legal advice to anyone regarding the registration “requirement”, but we can say that the current administration is using laws that have been on the books since the 1950’s to try and back this Executive Order up, when those same laws have been largely unenforced. It is not clear how the federal government will be able to enforce this new edict – stay tuned for more updates as they come.
USCIS seems to be the hub through which they are expecting most people to register, so the rollout may be a bit slow (we have yet to see specific forms, links, etc)
ICE arrested a graduate student at Columbia on Saturday named Mahmoud Khalil. See the NPR article about this incident here.
ICE said initially that his Visa was being revoked, but he has a green card, which they then pivoted to say was what they were revoking. His wife is currently 8 months pregnant, and it is being reported that he is being taken to a detention center in Louisiana.
This arrest is extremely concerning due to Mahmoud being a green card holder and the clear correlation to his involvement in student protests at Columbia. We cannot let this fascist regime retaliate against protestors and immigrants like this.
Please sign this petition for Mahmoud here.
Illinois
See last week’s update for information about state legislation.