Government Initiative Expands to Include Downtown Chicago and Transportation
The United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew S. Boutros, recently announced that the federal government would be expanding the “Project Safe Neighborhoods” initiative to include economic centers downtown, as well as covering the entire rail system operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (“CTA”). When announcing the expansion, Boutros said that, “Downtown Chicago is the capital of the region’s economy and the cultural and civic heart of the Midwest, where interstate commerce runs strong. Many billions of dollars of revenue, taxes, and investments are anchored in our city’s financial districts, and when violence and criminal activity cause our residents, businesses, and tourists not to feel safe to live, invest, and shop in Chicago, everyone suffers, whether at the federal, state, or local level.” The PSN, as it is referred to, is a nationwide initiative in which federal agencies such as the US Department of Justice, ATF, FBI and others work with local law enforcement such as the Chicago Police Department in designated areas in an effort to reduce violent and serious crimes by providing resources and developing strategies to address the crimes and hopefully reduce them in the future. PSN’s are driven by what they call their “four key design elements: focused and strategic enforcement; prevention and intervention; accountability; and community engagement.” In practice this means trying to identify areas at issue, increasing police presence and resources, increased prosecutions, and engaging with community leaders in the areas where they are deployed. The new PSN for Chicago greatly expands the current areas from seven neighborhoods on the city’s West and South sides to include three police districts in downtown Chicago and for the first time it will be deployed on a mass transit system, with every CTA line in the city, an expansion welcomed by local law enforcement. “This new investment of federal resources is critically needed to address the threat that crime—including organized retail theft, carjacking, and armed robberies—pose to the heart of Chicago’s economy and to the transportation systems that tens of thousands of Chicagoans use to travel to and from the downtown,” said Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart about the new PSN. What specific effects and strategies will result from this new focus remains to be seen, but it is likely that there will be an increase in prosecutions with the additional resources and strategies made available.
Immigration Officials Reportedly Focus on Chicago
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently stated that he believed that the Trump Administration is preparing for a mass of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to be sent “in force” to Chicago in the coming weeks. Field Director of the Chicago ICE field office more-or-less confirmed that belief, in a recent statement to WGN news saying that federal agents would be working seven days a week to enforce federal law in the streets of Chicago despite the city’s sanctuary laws on the books that prohibit or limit any local cooperation with federal law enforcement for certain immigration purposes. “While we’re focusing on a lot of the criminals, there are a subset of those who are here illegally that have final orders of removal that were maybe on some type of reporting procedure, but at some point, they’ve already been already ordered removed by a judge, so again, we’re just enforcing that order,” Olson told WGN in outlining his office’s actions and priorities. While some local leaders have outright refused to work with the federal government on immigration matters, Alderman Raymon Lopez has recently met with Administration officials in an attempt to work with them to focus the federal actions on immigrants that have committed crimes as a compromise, saying simply that some enforcement actions are inevitable and it would be more realistic to work with federal officials. “The federal government is bigger than the city of Chicago,” he added. “And now, we’re going to feel it” as a result of leaders refusal to work with him. No matter what next steps are taken, expect federal agents and prosecutions to increase in the city of Chicago in the near future as the federal government makes enforcement in the city a priority.
