President Donald Trump promised to repress the crime in Chicago. NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep spoke with Governor Pritzker in Chicago about racial profiling potential.
Juana Summers, host:
Today, the Governor of Illinois has been unleashed at the Trump administration and the Supreme Court. JB Pritzker is in a battle with the president. Trump threatened to send the national guard to Chicago to assume what he calls uncontrollable crime. Pritzker is against this decision. He calls it a power outlet. Now the administration has launched a wave of federal immigration agents in Chicago. Pritzker denounced this operation in an interview today with Steve Inskeep of NPR.
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JB Pritzker: The vast majority of the people they hold are not criminals. These are in fact only people who live here in Illinois. They can have a partially documented situation or they are undocumented. Many, by the way, are fully documented. And now, apparently, they will stop people who simply speak with a Spanish accent.
Steve Inskeep: There is – and you refer to a decision of the Supreme Court, without explanation canceled a lower court and facilitating the pursuit of searches, at least in Los Angeles. What do you think of this decision?
Pritzker: This decision, for me, is a reversal of progress that we have made in this country, where we have resisted and made laws that oppose racial profiling. And now you have federal glacial agents with masks, seizing street people who speak with an accent or could be brown or black and disappear. I didn’t think we lived in a country like that. But it is, in fact, what they did and what they now intend to do more.
Inskeep: Brett Kavanaugh, the judge of the Supreme Court, in one – what is called a concordant opinion, said that it was perfectly reasonable to question someone if they leave a construction site where people who can be here without legal status could work or if they cannot speak English. And if they are legitimate or citizens, you let them go.
Pritzker: Do you think they question them? – Because it is not what we see in one of the passenger videos that have been made. People are seized and they are thrown into vans. And it’s different to question people.
And oh, by the way, I want to ask a question to all those who listen to you and to you. Do you carry with your citizenship documents? How do you prove to someone you are an American citizen – your accent, the color of your skin? This is not the country in which we live. You know, you shouldn’t have to walk with papers, as they did at the start of Nazi Germany, to prove that you belong and that you are not one of them. And this is essentially the type of country that we become if you allow Ice to simply grasp people after racial profiling.
Inskeep: We talked with a priest here in Chicago who is an activist, who says they do what he calls training and encourages people to transport their identity documents at any time. Would you encourage chicagoans to do this?
Pritzker: Listen, I am deeply worried, in particular for people who have partial documentation, who are legally here, but it may not be American citizens, right? They have permission to be here. I am particularly worried about them because nothing that they will wear will be good enough for the ice. And of course, I am concerned about the idea that we become a country where your privacy is no longer suitable for the government. And instead, they can simply stop you on the street because of your appearance and say, show me that you belong here. Show me that you are an American citizen. It is, once again, not the country in which I grew up.
Summers: He was the governor of Illinois JB Pritzker in an interview with our colleague Steve Inskeep. You can hear the rest of their conversation on Morning Edition tomorrow. You can also find it on video.
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