Chicago must remain a sanctuary city by law. It’s who we are in practice

Let me start by saying something other politicians won’t say: No one knows what to do in the face of the current migrant crisis. We’re making good progress, thanks to city and state funding commitments, but we need federal assistance. Short of that, the crisis will continue.

However, a cohort of strange bedfellows in Chicago’s City Council — including members of the Black and Latino caucuses as well as descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants — are proposing a different tact: repealing Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance, also known as our sanctuary city ordinance.

They say this will deter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott from continuing to send asylum-seekers to Chicago with one-way bus tickets, but in reality, we’d be playing right into Donald Trump and his fanboys’ racism. 

The Welcoming City ordinance is the product of Mayor Harold Washington’s legacy and has nothing to do with asylum-seekers. It specifically pertains to the rights of undocumented residents and protection from being hunted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Being a sanctuary city is a demonstration of Chicago’s principles: We welcome immigrants and respect their humanity. The notion that repealing it will somehow stop the flow of migrants or give us moral “cover” to bus them to other cities is nonsense. All we will accomplish is humiliating ourselves and the Democratic Party.

Chicagoans do not subscribe to Trump’s “build the wall” politics. We rejected his xenophobia in 2016 and 2020, and we need to reject it now as we approach the 2024 presidential election and the Democratic National Convention that will be held in Chicago in August.

The convention is a once-in-a-generation moment for the city to shine. Instead, some of our city’s leaders are flirting with embarrassing us on the world stage and causing deep fissures within the Democratic Party, which needs to be unified to prevent Trump from becoming president for a second time.

Fear of ‘the outsider’

Be it by choice or force, we are all descendants of people from someplace else. Whether your family immigrated in the 1920s or in 2020, by boat or by bus from the American South, all of us have experienced persecution and oppression as the outsider.

That’s why it’s particularly disappointing to see members of currently marginalized communities parrot the same racist talking points that are routinely and successfully used to oppress us. We are seeing weird, bizarro reverse freedom rides, where Black people are rallying to stop arriving buses. We are seeing small groups in immigrant communities — often funded by right-wing partisans — protesting sheltering migrants in their communities.

No matter your background, embracing Trumpist racism, xenophobia and isolationism won’t stop with the current wave of asylum-seekers. Instead, if the Chicago City Council takes the bait and validates Trumpism in one arena, it gives his ideology life and the ability to spread to people and places he’s never had access to before.

Trump and Abbott would be tickled pink that tough-talking Chicago preaches tolerance, cross-cultural understanding and basic human rights for all, but when push comes to shove, we fall flat on our face.

Chicago must not fall. We must remain a sanctuary city by law because that is who we are in practice. Our 77 neighborhoods are home to immigrants from all over the world. There are Black, Brown, Middle Eastern and Asian communities across the city. Our diversity, resilience and commitment to our democratic principles should be on full display at the Democratic National Convention. That’s the only way we beat Trump and his racist ideas back into the shadows where they belong.

Chicago and Illinois sit at the crossroads of America. We are the land of Lincoln and Barack Hussein Obama, two men who weren’t born in our state but came here to change the world. That’s what we should be displaying to the world next year.

State Sen. Robert Peters (D-Chicago) has served in the Illinois Senate since 2019 and represents the 13th District.

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