Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking a stand against the Trump administration’s illegal immigration crackdown. Not content with simply defying ICE, the Chicago mayor is trying to expand more government services to the illegal residents of his city.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and City Clerk Anna Valencia are expanding the reach of Chicago’s municipal identification program and taking steps to prevent that sensitive information from being used against undocumented immigrants.
When Emanuel appointed Valencia to replace Susana Mendoza, his marching orders were to speed up the one-year timetable for implementing the municipal ID that will allow undocumented immigrants to access city services and expand the reach of that new ID.
At a time when undocumented immigrants are living in fear of the mass deportations threatened by President-elect Donald Trump, Emanuel also wanted the new city clerk to ease concerns that personal information required to qualify for a municipal ID may somehow find itself in the hands of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The ordinance that Emanuel and Valencia plan to jointly introduce at Wednesday’s City Council meeting is tailor-made to accomplish both of those goals.
To protect confidentiality, the city will ask for “minimal information” and will not ask applicants about their immigration status. Nor will the city retain copies of applicants’ personal information.
These municipal IDs ask for less information than even a citizen’s state ID. By implementing this program, Emanuel is not only enabling illegal immigrants, he’s giving them advantages not offered to his city’s citizens. But his reign might not last long. Only time will tell how those citizens will feel once Emanuel’s policies start costing the city federal funding.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
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