CHICAGO — Aldermen tried Tuesday to send a clear message to Chicago police: Do not cooperate with President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts.

And several members of the City Council’s Immigration Committee left the marathon meeting frustrated, unable to get clear answers about the role of responding officers during a June 4 deportation raid in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents clashed with protesters and several aldermen.

The committee ordered police, emergency dispatchers and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration to share more information about the incident, though it’s not clear what will come of their attempt to figure out what happened.

During a nearly four-hour hearing, aldermen pressed the city to investigate how CPD officers interacted with ICE that day, but police brass and other city leaders did not offer clear answers on how an investigation will move forward. Under city and state law, local law enforcement is prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration officers.

Several aldermen who attended the June protest said during the hearing that Chicago officers may have overstepped and supported ICE’s actions, which would be a violation of city policy. At the very least, they argued, police and other agencies must share more information so the hectic June 4 raid can be vetted.

“There are a lot of issues that happened that day that need clarity,” Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, said. “Our residents deserve to know that the city is on their side.”

Around 20 people received cryptic messages to attend appointments at a South Loop building housing an ICE program, where they were later detained by federal law enforcement officers. The officers, wearing masks and face coverings, pushed people out of the office into unmarked white vans as their family members watched. Many of those detained were parents.

Aldermen said the mayor’s office told them in mid-June that an internal review was underway, but representatives from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and Office of the Inspector General, two agencies independent of the Police Department, said Tuesday they have not yet launched investigations.

COPA cited conflicts of interest and jurisdictional issues to explain why it and CPD’s Bureau of Internal Investigations were not investigating the allegations of inappropriate police coordination with ICE.

“This isn’t about passing the buck. We’re committed, and we don’t want to erode public trust,” LaKenya White, COPA’s interim chief administrator, said.

It is unclear when more details will be released.

Asked when her office would start its investigation, city Inspector General Deborah Witzberg said a police misconduct investigation conducted by her office would be less publicly transparent than one conducted by COPA or by the Bureau of Internal Affairs.

“Our rules are different,” Witzberg said. “We have different obligations around confidentiality.”

Still, aldermen got some answers about the raid when Chenetra Washington, deputy director of 9-1-1 operations at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said two of the three calls that led police to respond to the raid came from people tied to the federal authorities behind the deportations.

During the hearing, CPD Community Policing Director Glen Brooks also reiterated his department’s commitment to not assisting in deportations, though he acknowledged police went inside the building where ICE made arrests.

“We were unaware that this was an ICE facility,” Brooks said. “We went because we were called there and we went to assess the safety concerns.”

Police stayed on scene because they determined they needed to make sure the dozens of protesters spilling onto South Michigan Avenue were kept safe, even though city rules ban police from setting up security perimeters to support deportation actions, he said.

Asked by Rodriguez if CPD would share body camera footage and other information to show how police interacted with ICE agents, Brooks pledged the department would follow data access laws. To drive his point, Rodriguez told Brooks he wanted to know what happened to his colleague Ald. Anthony Quezada, 35th, who an ICE agent appeared to strike during the protest.

“I want to know why he was pushed to the ground. My understanding is it wasn’t CPD that did that, but it was the armed gestapo, who were in face masks, that we can’t tell who they are,” Rodriguez said.

Throughout the hearing, aldermen reflected on the early June day when they witnessed dozens of families being separated. Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, described middle schoolers crying for their mothers and families left in anguish as their loved ones were taken away.

“I want to elevate the stories of what happened,” he said.

And police officials and aldermen both recognized that ICE operates as an independent law enforcement agency, though there was still confusion about whether officers on the scene operated lawfully.

“We’re being tested. Our city is being tested,” Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said.

Afterward, aldermen shared mixed reactions to what they did and did not learn. Quezada called the discussion “very helpful,” citing the new information on who called the police.

“We are starting to uncover those answers,” he said. “We expect that more of these incidents will occur, and we want to make sure that the public knows that our police department is following local municipal laws.”

But while Immigration Committee Chair Ald. Andre Vasquez said he wasn’t surprised aldermen got few specifics from police brass on what happened, he called it an “unfortunate reality” that such information often is not forthcoming from department officials. Vasquez lamented the lack of oversight of the raid and the police response to questions, but acknowledged that the deportations are unprecedented.

“I think a lot of people doing good work had no idea what steps to take,” Vasquez said. “But there have been more (deportations), and there will continue to be more, so I think it is our responsibility to clarify those things and figure out that protocol swiftly.”

Ald. Jessie Fuentes, 26th, said the city was “ill-prepared” to answer council members’ questions. It is impossible for city leaders to discuss how to better comply with local immigration laws with so little information, she argued.

Witnessing the deportations that day was “not only heart-wrenching, it was infuriating,” Fuentes said.

“And then to be here today and not have clarity on how we are fully investigating the events of June 4,” she said. “It feels like we may not be taking this as seriously as we should.”

_______

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.