CHICAGO, IL - The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing whether to revive the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging Illinois’ sanctuary policies, WTTW reported.
On Thursday, October 29, the appeals court heard oral arguments from the Department of Justice and attorneys representing the state of Illinois, Cook County, and the city of Chicago over the administration’s dismissed lawsuit challenging the three defendants’ sanctuary policies.
In July 2025, U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit, which alleged that Illinois was unlawfully interfering with the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration law, Reuters reported. In her ruling, Jenkins found that the federal government’s lawsuit conflicted with the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering doctrine.
The Illinois laws and ordinances at issue date back more than a decade. Chicago passed a 2012 ordinance restricting city agencies and employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and the state adopted a law in 2017 that largely mirrored the Chicago ordinance.
Whether the lawsuit is revived now rests with a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit, which has not yet issued a ruling.
In its appeal, the Justice Department argues that the laws and ordinances “single out federal immigration officials” and “represent an open assault on the federal government’s plenary authority over immigration.”
Alex Hemmer, Illinois’ deputy solicitor general, argued for the state, “Nothing in the text or structure of the INA requires states to pledge police resources to the enforcement of federal immigration law, to execute immigration detainers, transfer state prisoners to federal custody or respond to federal investigative inquiries regarding those prisoners.”
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