Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson heads to D.C., talks about responding to immigration raids

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson headed to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to speak at the National Press Club luncheon.

The mayor talked about the challenges of leading Chicago this past year, and what city officials learned about resisting federal overreach and responding to federal immigration raids in the city.

The topics the mayor addressed included public safety, cuts to federal funding, and what the mayor called "defending civil liberties in the midst of militarized immigration enforcement."

Johnson listed the actions Chicago took in response to federal actions in Chicago, from formal legal action to "know your rights" education efforts. "By the time [Border Czar] Tom Homan came to Chicago, he complained that Chicagoans were, and I quote, 'too well educated on their rights for ICE to be effective.'"

But the mayor said informing people of their rights was insufficient, and "concrete actions" were required. With that in mind, his office enacted a series of "Protecting Chicago" executive orders — one setting out guidance for city departments in the event of a deployment of federal troops or agents, another establishing a right to protest and setting guidelines for how local law enforcement would handle protests, and a third establishing "ICE-free zones, essentially prohibiting ICE and Border Patrol from staging on city properties and entering city properties without a judicial warrant."

Such an "ICE-free zone" order had not been enacted anywhere else in the country, the mayor said.

"I'm obviously very much still concerned about the private, masked, terrorizing police force that the Trump administration continues to sic on working people across this country," said Mayor Johnson said Tuesday ahead of the visit to D.C. "It's why I've used every single tool available that's available to me, and many mayors have looked to those tools that we've used, whether it's through the ICE-free zones, and even the litigation around ICE-free zones, so that we can strengthen and codify our ability to enforce it."

Mayor Johnson said the next step has to be "real organized resistance, as what we saw organized and prepared during the Civil Rights Movement."

"We cannot just simply leave it to protests that just react to the egregious and the harmful and deadly actions coming from the Trump administration," Johnson said.

Johnson is in Washington to attend the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Meanwhile, Mayor Johnson also said he is extremely proud of how Chicago handled the 2024 Democratic National Convention. But he is concerned that if the city were awarded the 2028 convention, it would not receive the federal help needed for security for the event.

"You know, the Democratic National Convention would take place at a time in which the Trump administration will still be in charge, and what we've seen in cities across America — and more recently Minneapolis — that to turn over our security to the Trump administration, it's not just me," said Johnson. "There are a number of us that have profound concerns about that."

In 2024, Chicago received a $75 million grant from the federal government for security costs.

Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Las Vegas, and San Antonio are also believed to be bidding to host the political convention in 2028.