Pritzker’s Sanctuary Illinois Let 500 Go and Now Congress Has the Receipts

Chicago police and Illinois jailers kept turning people loose when ICE wanted to pick them up. A House Judiciary Committee interim staff report released Thursday documents more than 500 releases involving illegal aliens accused or convicted of crimes, following several of those people from their release to their next arrest.

There’s a lot in the report, but start with the records Cook County sent Congress. Its jail released 408 people with active ICE detainers in 2025. Some faced domestic battery charges involving bodily harm. ICE wanted custody before they left the jail.

Cook County’s answer, all year, was no:

The Cook County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) released 408 criminal aliens from its custody in 2025 instead of honoring active ICE detainers for those same aliens, including for aliens with pending charges for domestic battery with bodily harm, domestic violence, and a firearms offense.

The detainer list runs wider than that:

In 2025, CCSO did not transfer a single alien to ICE based off an immigration detainer, even though CCSO received detainers for aliens charged with crimes ranging from driving under the influence, assault, retail theft, child endangerment, and aggravated assault with a rifle.

Zero transfers. That takes a policy.

The state prison system let nearly 100 illegal aliens go in 2024 and 2025 without transferring them to ICE. Then there are the Chicago police records: about 1,136 federal detainers, administrative warrants, and requests for release notices arrived between July 2024 and June 2026. Chicago turned no one over during those two years.

For a detainer pickup, ICE needs advance notice and a brief hold. Agents can collect the person at the jail. Refuse that request, release him, and now they need to figure out where he went. Illinois keeps making deportations harder at the point when the person is easiest to find.

In one January 2025 case, Chicago police released an Ecuadorian illegal alien arrested on allegations of assault and luring a child despite an ICE detainer. Two weeks later, he was accused of participating in a robbery and killing inside a Chicago home, according to the report. Another man released after a February 2025 domestic violence arrest faced another domestic violence arrest a year later, along with three counts of resisting a peace officer.

Sheridan Gorman's case isn't in this report, but it's the backdrop. Gorman, 18, was shot in a Chicago park in March while watching the Northern Lights with friends. Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan illegal alien, was charged in her killing. Border Patrol caught him at El Paso in 2023. The Biden administration released him despite flagging him as a likely flight risk with no ID and no valid address. Chicago later arrested him for shoplifting and let him go. He never showed for court. Her father, Tom Gorman, said afterward: 

"No family should have to become experts in immigration failures, release policies, warrants, sanctuary laws, and enforcement breakdowns because their daughter was killed by someone who should not have been here and should not be free."

RedState covered the earlier warning in December, when Ward Clark reported DHS's statewide figure of 1,768 releases since January 20, 2025. Different periods and a broader group than this report, so don't combine the totals. The warning itself was clear enough. Illinois kept its restrictions anyway.

The state prison releases were worse. Alfonso Batalla Garcia's convictions included attempted murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and aggravated kidnapping. He received a 30-year sentence. Illinois released him without honoring the detainer, and ICE had to track him down afterward to deport him.

Cook County says Illinois law bars civil immigration detainers, although it honors criminal warrants signed by judges. That's the defense. It's also the problem. The county has supplied 408 reasons, and state prisons have supplied nearly another 100.

Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) tightened the restrictions in 2021. He ought to have to answer for Batalla by name. Illinois knew his convictions, had him in prison, and had ICE’s request. It released him without a transfer anyway. Nobody needed another report to know that handing that man over was the right call. The committee's investigation continues. The question now is whether Illinois pays a price for what its own records show.

Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.

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