In the wake of Minnesota, several Democratic-led states are looking for ways to limit immigration agents’ activities. Some Republican-led states are ordering local governments to cooperate with them.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Can local officials, even local residents, take action against federal immigration agents? After federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota and amid scenes of their tactics with protesters and immigrants, officials in some Democratic-led states say they can charge federal agents with crimes. On the other hand, Republican state lawmakers say they’ll do more to assist those agents. To talk about this, we’re joined by Marianna Bacallao with member station WPLN in Nashville and Mawa Iqbal in Springfield, Illinois, with WBEZ. Hi to both of you.
MAWA IQBAL, BYLINE: Hello.
MARIANNA BACALLAO, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: Mawa, let’s start with you and what has been happening in Illinois since the ICE surge there last fall. Tell us the latest.
IQBAL: Right. So the surge last fall saw crowds of protesters often clashing violently with ICE agents, and then agents, you know, slamming people to the ground, putting them in choke holds. So Governor JB Pritzker, who’s the Democrat here, has started what’s called an Accountability Commission to essentially collect evidence from citizens about ICE’s behavior, both towards protesters and immigrants. It actually just met on Friday. So here’s what the chair of the commission, who’s a former judge, Ruben Castillo, had to say about potentially prosecuting ICE agents.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUBEN CASTILLO: We will have conversations with those in local law enforcement to suggest prosecutions that should be occurring even as we speak.
IQBAL: The commission will now make recommendations about how to hold federal agents accountable. I even talked with one prosecutor from the Chicago suburbs who’s looking at a couple of complaints from bystanders who say they were pepper-sprayed. This is something that prosecutors in Philadelphia and California have also talked about doing – you know, holding agents accountable.
SUMMERS: Right. And I know that you’ve been looking into the law on this. Can they prosecute?
IQBAL: Well, White House officials have raised this idea that agents have blanket immunity when they’re doing their job, but they’ve also kind of went back and forth on that statement. But legal experts say that this is just not the case. This is what Harrison Stark, who is an attorney who works at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, told me recently.
HARRISON STARK: There is no structural or blanket barrier to states bringing a criminal prosecution against federal officials or for state laws applying to federal officials while they’re performing federal function.
IQBAL: So he says it’s really a case-by-case basis. You know, were these agents performing within the scope of their