On Tuesday, Dec. 9, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker confirmed the status of Illinois as a state in open rebellion against the United States of America, by signing a bill passed by the state legislature during the recent veto session (HB 1312), forbidding federal authorities from enforcing federal law – including but not limited to immigration law – at a host of locations in Illinois, including hospitals, courthouses, universities and daycares, even to the extent of forbidding such entities from sharing information such as immigration status with federal law enforcement. 

Gov. Pritzker would, of course, disagree with the above characterization; he and his corrupt party have long contended that it’s the federal government that’s in violation of the law, by daring such basic tasks as law enforcement and protecting the borders, but they aren’t fooling anyone anymore. 

Illinois has reached the logical conclusion of a state that has long called itself a “sanctuary state,” illegally welcoming unvetted and unapproved aliens to its main sanctuary county, Cook, and its main sanctuary city, Chicago.   Having drawn a broad array of gang members and other criminals, welfare graspers and political activists to the city (far outweighing any net potential positive contribution of the few among them who are undoubtedly decent folks), Illinois is now the host of so many vermin that the federal government had to come in and help. 

Illinois has spent years refusing to arrest criminals committing “flash mob” style retail crimes; refusing to hold criminals after capture by making bail release completely free, and spending billions of hard-working citizens’ tax dollars on health care, housing, food, education, and more for illegal aliens.   

The federal government shouldn’t have to come to Chicago, in the very heart of the heartland, to enforce the border. Gov. Pritzker and his cronies necessitated this, by drawing these unworthy people to Chicago in the first place. 

In such enforcement actions as Operation Midway Blitz, the Department of Homeland Security has caught hundreds of criminals, from gang recruiters to lone wolves, from robbers and child abusers to murderers – criminals whom the powers-that-be in Illinois would prefer remain on the streets, free to terrorize their constituents at will. 

Why? 

There are many theories; the Democrat politicians of a century ago would have put the safety of their constituents ahead of the freedom of criminals, but no longer. Perhaps some of today’s Democrat politicians value the political contributions of the criminal element. Perhaps they value the votes of that bloc on Election Day. Perhaps they like a situation that keeps their constituents poor and dependent on government.  Perhaps the interests of the United States of America are simply not on their list of priorities. 

Reviewing the list of places from which Pritzker’s illegal power grab would banish federal law enforcement, one cannot help but notice a common thread:  

Health care, daycare, colleges, and universities are largely funded, directly or indirectly, by federal tax dollars.  These aren’t “Illinois-only” locations that some 19th century states-rights advocate could claim as being independent of that far-off federal government; these are locations that the vast majority of users attend or consume with federal checks, federal tax credits (or refundable tax credits), or the array of grants that a century of leftist advocacy has created. Even the ones that look and feel the most private are funded largely by the kind of state money that the state received directly from federal largesse.  

In short, if the feds have a right to be anywhere, they certainly have a right to be here. 

To ban federal law enforcement from courthouses, hospitals, and colleges – with the specific intent of ensuring that everyone within those buildings remain at risk from known criminals – is the ultimate in malice.  Whoever Pritzker and his legislative goons may be serving, it’s not the law-abiding citizens of Illinois. 

At his signing ceremony, Gov. Pritzker rattled off an amazing statement, so tone-deaf in its implications: 

“Our people have been forced to live in fear. Everyday activities, like dropping off the kids at school, going to the park with your family, going to the doctor, showing up at your job, has meant risking your safety and your livelihood.  Fear and intimidation have been visited upon us by fellow Americans. It’s unconstitutional.” 

Speaking to his audience of Marxists and insurrectionists, he certainly felt logically consistent in this statement. 

But we outsiders, watching his speech from a distance, think of a very different situation: 

We think of the reality of a massive, intentional crime zone, the urban ghetto of Chicagoland, into which Democrat politicians have nourished an infestation of muggers and drug dealers, rapists and wife-beaters, child-abusers and murderers, to terrorize the community for generations. 

Try reading this governor’s speech from the perspective of the law-abiding citizen instead, and think of how many times his millions of constituents have been victims of the very criminals that Pritzker not only releases on Illinois’s behalf, but today tries to protect further, by tying the hands of the federal government so that the feds cannot help, either. 

It is the workers and children at these daycare centers, the doctors, nurses and patients at those hospitals, the professors and students at our colleges, the clerks, lawyers, witnesses and victims at the courthouses, who spend their days in fear for their lives.  

The people whom Gov. Pritzker pompously pretends to be protecting are in fact the very people he has been endangering, not only today but every single day since he took office. 

This HB 1312 is just one more type of lawfare, an illegal effort to hamstring the federal government in the same way that the Democrats’ many frivolous prosecutions of President Trump have attempted to retard his work over the past decade.  It will be declared unconstitutional, because it so plainly is just that, and nothing but. 

But as shameful an act as it is, as destructive and malevolent as a law can be, it serves us in one useful way:  HB 1312 shows us, more clearly than any other, just who today’s Democrat politicians are, who they serve, and what they think of the interests of their law-abiding constituents. 

If you work hard, obey the law, pay your taxes, and raise your family, Gov. Pritzker and his cronies want your lives jeopardized by the criminal element, because that’s the demographic they value, not yours. 

Image: Anxelli84, via Wikimedia Commons (extracted) // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker.  Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his 2024 collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, exclusively on Amazon.