EXCLUSIVE — Illinois and Chicago authorities released more than 500 illegal immigrants from custody rather than cooperate with federal immigration officials, including people accused or convicted of violent crimes, according to a House Judiciary Committee report obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The Republican-led committee’s interim staff report, released Thursday by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), detailed how Illinois’s sanctuary policies prevented state and local authorities from transferring illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The report identified cases in which people released from custody were later accused of murder, domestic violence, robbery, and other crimes.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office released 408 illegal immigrants in 2025 despite active ICE detainers, according to nonpublic records provided for the committee’s 28-page report. The group included criminal illegal immigrants facing charges of domestic battery causing bodily harm, domestic violence, and a firearms offense.
The sheriff’s office did not transfer a single person to ICE despite requests to do so from immigration officers that year, the report found, even after receiving detainers for people accused of crimes including driving under the influence, assault, retail theft, child endangerment, and aggravated assault with a rifle.
An ICE detainer asks a state or local agency to notify federal immigration officers before releasing a person believed to be removable from the United States and, in some cases, to maintain custody for up to 48 additional hours so ICE can arrange to take custody.
The Illinois Department of Corrections separately released nearly 100 illegal immigrants in 2024 and 2025 without transferring them to ICE, according to information the department provided to the committee.
Those releases included a Mexican national sentenced to 30 years for attempted murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault causing bodily harm, and aggravated kidnapping. Another Mexican national had been convicted of attempted murder with intent to kill, while a third had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for assaulting a child.
The Chicago Police Department received roughly 1,136 ICE detainers, administrative warrants, or requests for advance notice between July 2024 and June 2026. It transferred no one to ICE during that period, according to the report.
Internal records obtained by the committee showed the Chicago police department’s Crime Prevention and Information Center telling ICE in October 2024 to “cease any further immigration-related requests moving forward.”
In one case highlighted, Chicago police arrested an illegal immigrant from Ecuador in January 2025 on accusations of assault and luring a child. Police released him rather than honor an ICE detainer, the report said.
Two weeks later, he was accused of tying up, robbing, and killing a man inside a Chicago home.
Chicago police arrested another illegal immigrant on a domestic violence charge in February 2025, the same day ICE lodged a detainer. Police released him, and officers arrested him again one year later on another domestic violence charge and three counts of resisting a police officer, according to the report.
The committee also identified an illegal immigrant arrested in August 2025 on a domestic battery charge. After Chicago police declined to honor an ICE detainer and released him, New Mexico authorities arrested him less than a year later on charges including aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, reckless driving, and leaving the scene of a crash.
The report connected those cases to laws enacted by Democratic officials that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) signed legislation in 2021 that barred local governments from entering immigration detention agreements with ICE and restricted officials from asking detainees about their citizenship or immigration status without a federal criminal warrant.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) also reaffirmed the city’s Welcoming City Ordinance shortly before President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. The ordinance generally prohibits city agencies from transferring illegal immigrants to ICE for civil immigration enforcement.
Jonathan Fahey, a former acting ICE director during Trump’s first term, told the Washington Examiner that Congress could pressure sanctuary jurisdictions by making federal criminal justice funding contingent on basic cooperation with immigration authorities, including honoring detainers.
“Money, any way you look at it, makes a huge difference to localities,” Fahey said. “That would be a way to do it and get them to maybe give up this fight.”
The report’s release comes just months after the March killing of Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old Loyola University freshman who was shot while viewing the Northern Lights with friends in a Chicago park.
Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was charged in Gorman’s killing in April. Border Patrol apprehended Medina-Medina near El Paso, Texas, in May 2023, but the Biden administration at the time released him despite determining that he was likely to flee, lacked identification, and could not provide a valid address, according to immigration records cited by the committee.
Chicago authorities later arrested Medina-Medina on a shoplifting charge. He was released, failed to appear in court, and was accused of killing Gorman less than three years later.
“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,” Gorman’s father, Tom Gorman, said after her death.
The committee said its investigation would continue as lawmakers consider legislation aimed at penalizing sanctuary jurisdictions and increasing cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the Sanctuary City Elimination Act in April. However, the proposal faces a steep procedural obstacle in the Senate, where most legislation needs 60 votes to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster.
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“The only way something like this could get passed with the current makeup would be some way to do it, such as with reconciliation,” Fahey said, referring to the budget process that allows qualifying legislation to clear the Senate without a 60-vote cloture vote. “I just think you couldn’t get support from the Democrats on this,” he said, adding the chances could be higher next year, depending on the November election outcome.
The Washington Examiner contacted the Cook County Sheriff’s office and the state’s Department of Corrections. Read the full 28-page report below: