Free Republic

A federal judge in Chicago just made a decision that’s raising eyebrows — and not just among immigration officers.In a move that’s already stirring debate nationwide, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled that ICE agents — yes, federal officers — can be arrested if they take migrants into custody at Cook County courthouses without a proper warrant. Let that sink in for a second. (snip) So, who’s actually in charge here — federal law enforcement… or local judges?And if ICE agents can be arrested for doing their jobs, what kind of message does that send to those who aren’t even...

CHICAGO (AP) — Cook County’s top judge has signed an order barring ICE from arresting people at courthouses. Cook County includes Chicago, which has seen a federal immigration crackdown in recent months. Detaining residents outside court has been a common tactic for federal agents, who have been stationed outside county courthouses for weeks, making arrests and drawing crowds of protesters. The order, which was signed Tuesday night and took effect Wednesday, bars the civil arrest of any “party, witness, or potential witness” while going to court proceedings. It includes arrests made inside courthouses and in parking lots, surrounding sidewalks and...

Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson suggested on Tuesday that the Chicago Police should arrest ICE agents and other federal officers who he claims are breaking his new executive order aimed at hampering immigration enforcement. On Monday, Johnson signed a dubious executive order creating “ICE-Free Zones” to ban federal agents from using city-owned properties as staging areas for immigration enforcement. Johnson’s proclamation comes as President Donald Trump suggested that the anti-ICE actions by Chicago’s leaders are akin to an insurrection against the federal government. Now, the mayor is claiming that violations of his orders are a “crime” and those who break...

“Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declared during a fiery press conference Tuesday, adding that he intends to “eradicate” that sickness. Johnson made the remarks after a reporter asked him about his administration’s public safety plan. “I get so sick and tired of people believing that the only thing that Black and Brown and poor people get to get in this city are badges,” he continued. “No. It’s a sickness and we’re gonna eradicate it.” Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), who recently announced a campaign to unseat...

The truth is that Mayor Pin Head and Gov. Fat Boy don’t really care about black and brown people who are the true victims of violent crimes. They care about the Chicago Teachers Union. They care about shielding Democrat boss Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board President and Cook County Democrat chairman. Boss Toni is a hard leftist protected by the corrupt corporate legacy media. She is without a doubt the architect of Chicago’s anarchy of crime. The Democrats are now the pro-criminal party. They are eager to defund police and clear out the county jail that Boss Toni considers...

The last time Jim Ryan ran for governor of Illinois, he offered voters a clear choice between a man who never took a dime in public life and Rod Blagojevich. And though many would like to forget it, they chose Blagojevich. "The infrastructure of the Illinois Republican Party has never really been for me," Ryan said over breakfast the other day as we talked about that 2002 campaign and his current run in the crowded GOP primary for governor. "I'm not a deal-maker. And senior Republicans knew my reputation. They knew I wouldn't be flexible." Seven years ago, Ryan, then...

The woman found not guilty by reason of insanity after running over a Chicago police officer with his own squad car is now asking the court to let her start anew—by changing her name. Whitley Temple, who was acquitted last year of attempting to murder Officer Ed Poppish during a bizarre 2022 West Side encounter, filed a petition on July 11 to legally change her first name to “Michelle,” according to Cook County court records. Temple fled the scene in the patrol car, briefly stopped at a gas station, then continued onto the Eisenhower Expressway, reaching speeds of 97 mph...

A man has been charged with punching at least four people and knocking them to the ground on the same day earlier this week in the Loop, South Loop and Lakeview neighborhoods. Joshua Rowell, 36, is charged with two counts of aggravated battery in Cook County Circuit Court, and one count of forcible assault on a federal judicial employee in federal court in Chicago. According to a Chicago Police Department arrest report, Rowell was arrested shortly before 5 p.m. on Tuesday in the South Loop, after he attacked a 20-year-old woman on the street in the 900 block of South...

CWBChicago has obtained surveillance footage of a shooting that left one teenager dead and another gravely wounded near the Douglass Park swimming pool on Thursday evening. Marjay Dotson, 15, died from a gunshot wound to his back, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. A 14-year-old boy, identified to the media by family members as Jeremy Herred, has undergone surgery for a gunshot wound to his neck. On Saturday evening, Chicago police announced that murder charges had been filed against 55-year-old Charles Leto of Lakeview. CPD and fire department personnel responded to the park at 1401 South Sacramento at...

Mayor Brandon Johnson urged Chicagoans to “rise up in this moment” against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort, even as he acknowledged Wednesday that the deployment of the military to help carry out immigration raids in Los Angeles could happen here. Johnson refused to say precisely what he would do if mass demonstrations in Chicago — perhaps as soon as Saturday’s “No Kings Day of Defiance” protests — provoke an L.A.-style federal response. The mayor would only say that he is concerned enough to have spoken directly with Gov. JB Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle about the...

Chicago’s radical, progressive, Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson told the media on Wednesday that the Trump administration is “what our country would look like had the Confederacy won.” The race-obsessed, left-wing mayor railed against the Trump administration after hundreds of protesters flooded the streets of the Windy City in opposition to the president’s lawful immigration enforcement policies. Johnson by turns called Trump a “terrorist” and a “racist” in his comments to the press. The mayor with the single worst approval rating in the entire country also reminded the media that he recently said that Trump’s immigration policy is “what terrorism looks...

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund will receive an $80,000 payout after representing an illegal immigrant couple whose former Chicago landlords threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them. The landlords were banned from discriminating against tenants based on actual or perceived immigration status under the Illinois Immigrant Tenant Protection Act of 2019, according to a Thursday report from NBC News. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Catherine Schneider ruled that landlords Marco Antonio Contreras and Denise Contreras had to pay damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs, for violations of that law.

Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston has announced a legislative proposal to incorporate 33 Illinois counties that have expressed a desire to secede from their state. This initiative comes after these counties, frustrated with the political dominance of Chicago and Cook County, voted in favor of exploring separation.

The Trump administration has filed suit against the state of Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago, arguing their sanctuary laws “interfere” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ability to arrest and deport illegal migrants — the first of many such lawsuits to come, Justice Department officials told The Post. The suit singles out several state and local laws that the Justice Department identifies as inhibiting the federal government’s ability to enforce US immigration law. “We’ve identified Illinois, the city of Chicago and Cook County as all having laws and ordinances on the books that impede federal immigration enforcement, in...

CHICAGO — A Cook County judge elected in 2024 to her first six-year term has been reassigned after circulating an image of a fake toy called “My First Ankle Monitor” that included a rendering of a Black toddler wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. “My husband’s idea of Christmas humor,” Judge Caroline Glennon-Goodman wrote in a text that she allegedly circulated to another member of the judiciary by mistake. The image was taken from a TikTok video. Glennon-Goodman has been assigned a pretrial courtroom at 26th and California since April 2024, where she ruled on detention petitions and set conditions of...

The outgoing top prosecutor in Illinois reportedly failed “compliance” and is no longer authorized to practice law. Former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx famously handled the case of actor Jussie Smollett after he staged an attack against himself. Her term ended on December 1, but she reportedly did not complete mandatory continuing education requirements. A search for the progressive’s name on the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission website shows that Foxx is “unauthorized to practice law as [the] attorney has not demonstrated required MCLE [Minimum Continuing Legal Education] compliance.” ... All continuing education credits that were completed had...

Sean Hill, the incorrigible nuisance arrested 75 times since 2015 and 12 times this year, will not be getting arrested for a while. That’s because a judge finally decided to send him to prison. Many of the 54-year-old’s arrests involved allegations of randomly battery people and grabbing women he did not know, usually downtown. But he’s going to prison for robbing an Old Town liquor store twice this year. On March 9, he allegedly took a bottle of Tito’s vodka from Garfield’s Beverage, 1437 North Wells, and told a store employee that he had a gun. One month later, he...

AChicago woman is fighting to keep her home after a government mix-up led officials to sell her house from underneath her on account of supposedly "delinquent taxes." Robin McElroy bought her home in the Morgan Park area of Chicago back in 2012. Since then, she said she has paid the taxes owed on the property and even kept receipts of her payments. "I do not like wasting money. ... I pay my bills," McElroy told CBS News. Despite those consistent payments, in 2019, McElroy began receiving notices that her property taxes were in arrears and that her property was in...

Samantha Steele, a Democratic official on Illinois’s Cook County Board of Review, was arrested Sunday for drunk driving and crashing into another car, Chicago Police records said. Police allegedly discovered the 45-year-old commissioner prone on the sidewalk near two cars that had “extensive” damage after arriving at the scene, the Chicago Sun Times reported. She confessed to driving into the other vehicle, police said. Officers found an open bottle of red wine on the passenger side of Steele’s car, according to the records. “I observed her eyes were bloodshot and glassy,” a police officer wrote, according to the outlet. “I...

The gunman who opened fire on a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Chicago is an illegal migrant from West Africa who was released into the US last year — and he targeted the victim because of his faith, law enforcement sources tell The Post. Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22 — who hails from Mauritania — crossed into San Diego in March 2023 and was screened by border agents, who quickly released him into the US, officials said. Federal investigators believe Abdallahi was specifically targeting Jews in an antisemitic attack when he ambushed a 39-year-old Orthodox Jewish man in the city’s...