Illinois’ current dispute over federal immigration enforcement is unfolding on two levels: state officials are challenging federal conduct and limiting enforcement at specified institutions, while municipalities are restricting how their own property and resources may be used. Those approaches overlap politically but have different legal reach.
A state law faces a federal challenge
Gov. JB Pritzker signed House Bill 1312 in December 2025. The law designates state courthouses, daycares, hospitals and college campuses as civil immigration-enforcement-free zones and creates a statutory right to sue federal agents over alleged constitutional violations, according to CBS News. The Justice Department sued Illinois officials, arguing that the law conflicts with the Supremacy Clause and interferes with federal enforcement. Those arguments remain contested; the lawsuit is not itself a ruling on the law’s validity.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul has also challenged federal enforcement actions in a separate case involving Operation Midway Blitz, according to the Chicago Tribune. The state’s longer legal history includes the 2017 Illinois TRUST Act. On Feb. 4, 2020, Raoul filed a brief defending the act’s constitutionality and its limits on local participation in federal immigration enforcement, according to the Illinois attorney general’s office.
Municipal actions are narrower
The municipalities’ measures address local facilities rather than federal authority. The Tribune reported that Aurora, Arlington Heights, Batavia, Downers Grove, Elgin, Naperville, West Chicago and Wheeling adopted ordinances or resolutions limiting the use of municipal property for immigration enforcement. Elgin used a resolution that bars city-owned property from serving as a staging area, processing location or operations base and calls for documenting alleged infractions.
Hanover Park adopted an ordinance after residents pressed the village board to act, while Hoffman Estates declined to adopt a similar restriction, the Tribune reported. The contrast illustrates the central policy disagreement: a local government can control access to its own property and announce standards for its personnel, but it cannot independently cancel federal agents’ authority to conduct federal operations. Whether a particular local measure is enforceable, preempted or largely expressive will depend on its text and on ongoing litigation.
Local limits do not answer the cooperation question
Federal-local cooperation has taken several forms over time. ICE’s nationwide Priority Enforcement Program operated from 2015 to 2017, according to ICE. Its archived materials distinguish between Form I-247N, which sought advance notice of a person’s release, and Form I-247D, which requested a hold of no more than 48 hours beyond the scheduled release.
ICE separately describes its 287(g) program as allowing participating state and local agencies to perform specified immigration-enforcement functions under ICE oversight, including certain identification, processing and jail-warrant duties, according to the agency. The available evidence does not show that any suburb discussed here participates in 287(g), nor does it establish a current statewide rate for ICE requests to Illinois agencies or local compliance with them. Municipal property restrictions therefore should not be treated as a measure of how often federal cooperation tools are used.
Why the dispute remains consequential
The political debate is also tied to allegations about federal conduct and to local economic effects. The Illinois Accountability Commission reported patterns of illegal and violent conduct during Operation Midway Blitz, including high-speed pursuits and chemical-agent use, according to the American Immigration Council; those are reported findings and remain part of the broader dispute over the operation.
A September 2026 University of Illinois Chicago study estimated that heightened enforcement during the operation was associated with about $1.26 billion in lost Cook County retail and restaurant sales and $107 million less in local sales-tax revenue, according to WTTW News. That estimate describes an economic effect during the operation; it does not determine whether any individual suburb’s ordinance changed enforcement activity or caused the reported losses.
The unresolved question is therefore not simply whether a suburb has declared itself an immigration-enforcement-free zone. It is how state restrictions, municipal control of public property and federal cooperation mechanisms interact—and which parts will survive the pending constitutional challenges.
