17 days. Sex assault → released → murder.
In January 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer for a non-citizen held in Cook County jail on charges of sexual assault of a minor. Cook County refused the detainer under the Illinois TRUST Act and Cook County Ordinance 11-O-73 — both signed and defended by Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D). The man was released. 17 days later he was arrested and charged with homicide. The Department of Justice made the case a centerpiece of its February 6, 2025 federal lawsuit against Pritzker, AG Kwame Raoul, Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Cook County. On July 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety on Tenth Amendment grounds. The policy is documented. The case is documented. The lawsuit failed. The policy continues.
ICE asked for him. Cook County said no.
The Department of Justice’s February 6, 2025 federal complaint against the State of Illinois, Cook County, and the City of Chicago cites the case in its statement of facts. Per the complaint:
Three statutes. All bar Cook County from helping ICE.
The 17-days outcome is not an accident or an enforcement gap. It is the direct, intended operation of three layered statutes that, together, prohibit Illinois state and local law enforcement from honoring civil ICE detainers:
Prohibits Illinois state and local law enforcement from detaining or arresting a person solely on the basis of an ICE detainer or civil immigration warrant.
Strengthens the TRUST Act: prohibits detention solely based on immigration detainer OR civil immigration warrant, and bars 287(g) agreements between Illinois law enforcement and ICE.
Prohibits Chicago Police Department from cooperating with ICE on civil immigration enforcement. Removed prior carve-outs for individuals with felony convictions or pending felony charges.
Prohibits Cook County Sheriff from honoring ICE detainers. Was the operative statute in the 17-days case — the ordinance Sheriff Dart's office cited in refusing the January 2025 detainer.
On the day of the January 2025 detainer, all four were in force. None has been repealed since. The statutes are not at issue legally — they are operating exactly as written.
The defendants in the DOJ’s lawsuit.
Every official named below appeared as a defendant in the DOJ’s February 6, 2025 federal complaint — and every one is still in office today. They are the chain of custody for Illinois sanctuary policy.
“We don't prevent the federal authorities from coming to our jails or coming to our prisons with a federal criminal warrant and take them. We, in fact, I would like them to do that, but it is up to them to go to a court to get that criminal warrant to take them away.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) · February 2025 statement
“The bipartisan Illinois TRUST Act, signed into law by a Republican governor, has always been compliant with federal law and still is today.”
Pritzker office · February 6, 2025 statement responding to DOJ lawsuit
DOJ tried to invalidate the policy. In federal court.
On February 6, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The complaint named the State of Illinois, Pritzker, Raoul, Chicago, Mayor Johnson, Supt. Snelling, Cook County, Preckwinkle, and Sheriff Dart as defendants.
DOJ’s legal theory: federal immigration law preempts the four state and local statutes; the policies discriminate against the federal government in violation of the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity; and the cumulative effect obstructs federal immigration enforcement, with the 17-days case cited as evidence of downstream harm. The complaint cited 13,564 ICE arrests in Illinois between 2016 and 2025 as the universe of cases potentially affected by the sanctuary statutes.
It was the Trump administration’s first lawsuit of its kind against any sanctuary jurisdiction in his second term — designed as a test case the administration intended to scale to other states if it won.
Tenth Amendment. Case dismissed in its entirety.
On July 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins dismissed the DOJ’s suit “in its entirety.” Her ruling rested on two constitutional grounds, both rooted in the Tenth Amendment:
“The Sanctuary Policies reflect Defendants' decision to not participate in enforcing civil immigration law — a decision protected by the Tenth Amendment.”
Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins · USDC N.D. Ill. · July 25, 2025
Jenkins held that allowing the federal government to “commandeer States under the guise of intergovernmental immunity”would itself violate the Tenth Amendment. Her ruling tracked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit’s dismissal of a similar Trump-era sanctuary lawsuit during the first Trump administration — meaning the precedent against this theory was already on the books in the Seventh Circuit.
The policy is documented. The case is documented. The lawsuit failed. The policy continues.
- The 17-days case happened.The DOJ’s federal complaint, multiple wire and mainstream outlets (NPR, Washington Post, NBC, ABC7, WBEZ, Block Club Chicago, Capitol News Illinois) confirm it.
- The perpetrator’s name has not been published. The DOJ filing anonymized the case. No Chicago outlet has obtained the name through court records or FOIA. Until that happens, we report what is in the public record and label what isn’t.
- The sanctuary statutes are still on the books. TRUST Act, Way Forward Act, Welcoming City Ordinance, Cook County 11-O-73 — all in force.
- The Trump DOJ’s first major sanctuary lawsuit failed. Judge Jenkins dismissed it on Tenth Amendment standing grounds, July 25, 2025.
- 1,700+ criminal illegal aliens have been released from Illinois custody under those policies since January 2025— per DHS’s December 2025 statement.
- Companion case: the same statutory framework governed the Sheridan Gorman case in March 2026 — Loyola freshman shot in a Chicago park by a man whose two prior ICE detainers had been ignored.