IL Gov. Pritzker On Crime, Immigration, Trump's 'Power Grab'

0:01The Illinois governor challenges a surge of federal agents in Chicago. People are being grabbed and they're being thrown into vans. That's different than questioning people. J.B. Pritzker blocked the National Guard, but not immigration arrests. We meet face-to-face in a special edition of Up First from NPR News. Governor Pritzker warned Chicagoans to be alert and take video. He faces criticism from an Illinois father whose daughter was killed in a drunk-driving crash with a man lacking legal status. We'll hear Pritzker's response. We ask what this billionaire thinks of the billionaires in the Trump administration.

0:38I believe it's about your values and not about how much money you have. And what does Pritzker think about the possibility of retribution from the White House? Stay with us for a governor also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028.

0:57J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, is in the middle of a battle with the Trump administration, a battle over immigration or over crime, or, Pritzker says, a power grab by the president. We talked about this and more here at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Governor, thanks for joining us and thanks for welcoming us to Chicago. It's always great to be here. Great to be with you, Stephen. Glad to have you. I want to understand first if you feel that the president's strategy towards Chicago is evolving in the past few days. It's hard to tell. It's almost like he's bipolar because on one hand, he is attacking Chicago and announces that this is shypocalypse and he wants to make it like apocalypse now and attack our city.

1:46On the other hand, he says, well, maybe I'll go somewhere else. Maybe we'll go to Portland or maybe we'll go to New Orleans. So it's really hard to tell what's evolving at the White House. But do you think that what's happened is that perhaps he's realized that he cannot legally send the National Guard without your request? And so he perhaps needs to lean more on immigration authorities, which he can send in. I don't know. Donald Trump doesn't seem to follow the law all that much or listen to people who would tell him what's legal and what's not. I hope so, though, because it's not legal for him to send military troops into the city of Chicago.

2:19He has sent ICE. They've been here before. As you may know, Tom Homan announced early, in fact, weeks before Donald Trump took office at a Republican fundraiser that they were targeting Chicago. This is the president's border czar, of course. Indeed. And Tom Homan not only said that, but then when Donald Trump took office, actually did that. Except he showed up here with Dr. Phil and he brought ICE troops with him, ICE agents. But it's clear that they were ineffective and that frustrated him a lot. And they went to some other places where they were trying to effectuate their plan and perhaps were better at it elsewhere.

3:05And so I think that frustration has been building that people in Chicago, in the neighborhoods here, know their rights. And no, they're not opening their doors for an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, but an administrative warrant, which is simply written by an ICE agent. And so they're coming back and back and back. And now they're attacking the city again with perhaps up to 300 ICE agents. So I'm frustrated by their frustration. All I can say is that they ought to understand that Chicago is a place that's going to protect its people. Is 300 ICE agents a lot more than you would normally have doing their job?

3:46Around Chicago? 300 is a much larger force than they brought the last couple of times. Also, they brought in new, what seem to be militarized vehicles that they're using. and the rhetoric around this has been one of we're attacking the city of Chicago. So I'm very concerned about all of that rhetoric and I'm concerned that Tom Homan doesn't understand what his job really is. He thinks he's going after people or says that he's going after people because he thinks they're criminals. But as we know, the vast majority of the people that they detain are not criminals. They're actually just people who live here in Illinois.

4:27They may have partially documented situation or they're undocumented. Many, by the way, are fully documented. And now apparently they're going to be arresting people who simply speak with a Spanish accent. There is – and you're referring to a Supreme Court ruling. Without explanation, overturning a lower court and making it easier for ICE to continue searches, at least in Los Angeles. What do you think of that ruling? That ruling to me is a reversal of progress that we've made in this country where we've stood against and effectuated laws that oppose racial profiling. And now you've got federal ICE agents wearing masks, grabbing people off the street who speak with an accent or might be brown or black and disappearing them.

5:15I did not think that we lived in a country like that. But that is, in fact, what they have been doing and what they now intend to do more of. Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice, in what's called a concurring opinion, said it is perfectly reasonable to question someone if they're leaving a construction site where people who may be here without legal status might be working or if they can't speak English. And if they're legitimate or citizens, you let them go. You think they're questioning them because that's not what any of us are seeing in any of the bystander videos that have been made.

5:49People are being grabbed and they're being thrown into vans. And that's different than questioning people. And oh, by the way, I want to ask a question to everybody who's listening and to you. Do you carry with you citizenship papers? How do you prove to somebody that you're a U.S. citizen? Your accent? The color of your skin? That's not the country we live in. You know, you shouldn't have to walk around with papers the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany to prove that you belong and that you're not one of them. And that is essentially the kind of country that we're becoming if you allow ICE to simply grab people after racial profiling.

6:27We spoke with a priest here in Chicago who is an activist who says they are doing what he calls trainings and encouraging people to carry their IDs at all times. Would you encourage Chicagoans to do that? Look, I'm deeply concerned, particularly for people who have partial documentation, who are here legally, but they may not be U.S. citizens, right? They've got permission to be here. I'm particularly worried for them because nothing that they will carry will be good enough for ICE. And, of course, I worry about the idea that we're becoming a country where your privacy is no longer appropriate for the government to recognize.

7:04And instead, they can simply stop you on the street because of how you look. and say, show me that you belong here. Show me that you're a U.S. citizen. That's, again, not the country that I grew up in. I want to ask a fundamental question about people who are here without legal status. The point of view of the administration and its supporters, many of them, would be those people are here illegally and they should go. If possible, they should all go. Do you believe that many or most people who are here without legal status fundamentally do belong here and have a place here? So let's start with this.

7:40They're arresting people outside of courthouses, people who are going there, in fact, to seek legal status if they don't have it already or to advance their legal status. Maybe they're here temporarily, but they'd like to stay permanently or they're here permanently, but they'd like to become a U.S. citizen. They're literally stopping people who are trying to follow the legal system to do the right thing. That's number one. Number two, I believe that people who've been here 10 and 20 and 30 years, who've raised families here, who are holding down jobs and paying taxes, who are following the law, they've never been in trouble with the law.

8:13I do believe that those are immigrants that we should want to have stay in this country and we should do everything we can to recognize them and go after people who have committed a crime, especially a violent crime especially, making sure that we're focused on that if it's about fighting crime, let's go after people who actually committed a murder, a rape, some kind of a violent crime and not just anybody that may seem like they don't belong. In announcing an operation against the city of Chicago in recent days, the administration said they were doing so in honor of Katie Abraham, who was an Illinois resident killed in a drunk driving incident, and the driver was without legal status in the United States.

8:59And the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the papers here, had an article about this young woman and her family and quoted the parents saying, quote, Katie was killed by someone who really could have been vetted and not been in this country, and she would be with us today. Which I think reflects a widespread view or widespread opinion in some corners about people who are undocumented here. What is your response to that? That you're talking about people who have committed, someone who's committed a violent crime. And I just said, we should be identifying them. We should make sure that they get arrested, that they're held accountable for the crimes that they commit.

9:44Not just everybody that happens to be here in this country and doesn't look like you or me. We're talking here about immigration, also talking about crime. Do you see the president as combining the two, combining the two issues or ideas? Clearly, his ends are racist ends. So he is conflating the two because he wants people to think that every person that's here that's not born in the United States is a criminal. That is kind of the veil that he's put over this entire endeavor of deporting people who are immigrants. The reality is that probably your family, probably my family, probably most families in this country, I know the vast majority, in fact, were immigrants at one time or another.

10:34And the people who are here in this country and some people are – you talk about an undocumented person. Yes, somebody who has committed a crime who is undocumented, I think we ought to grab and kick out of the country. That's not – violent criminals should not be allowed to stay if they're undocumented. I've said that many, many times. But the idea that every immigrant is a criminal is ridiculous. We're talking about a very small percentage, indeed a smaller percentage of the immigrant population have committed crimes than of the native-born populations here in the United States. So, yes, he's trying to conflate the two to meet his nefarious ends, you know, which are, you know, first to effectuate this kind of cleansing of people from the United States that he doesn't want to have here.

11:22And then second, to militarize our cities by backing up ICE, sending military troops in. The president keeps saying he would like you to call him. You've said you're not going to call him and ask for the National Guard. But setting that particular request aside, is it worth calling him? Do you have anything to discuss? I've called him before, Steve. Let me just recount history here. As the pandemic was coming upon us, I called him to ask him for help. I asked for millions of N95 masks. I asked him for thousands of ventilators. They agreed, he agreed, or Peter Navarro on his behalf agreed. One of his aides, okay.

12:09Yes, that they would deliver those things. They did not. And that is just par for the course with this administration and with this president most especially, that he makes promises throughout his career before he was president. He makes promises, he enters into contracts, and then he breaches those contracts and breaches those agreements. And I witnessed it firsthand in the worst health emergency that this country has ever seen or at least in 100 years. And I think he is not to be trusted. I am always happy to have conversation. But in this moment, when he is breaking the law consistently and we're having to take him to court consistently, me calling him and asking for any kind of help or having a conversation about the help that we would need, which by the way should be civilian law enforcement help, which we already utilize, ATF, FBI, DEA.

13:02But asking for any kind of help or having that conversation with him will become evidence in a case that I was asking for help and therefore he's going to send in military troops. That's the challenge in this moment. But look, he has been conversing with me by standing up in front of television cameras. I am conversing with him by standing up in front of television cameras.

13:25As you can hear, J.B. Pritzker does not believe the president's effort is really about crime in Chicago. But there is crime in Chicago. After a break, we'll ask about five homicides over the weekend.

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15:11In our visit to Chicago, we talked with Governor J.B. Pritzker about crime. Chicagoans have pointed out that the crime rates are dropping here and that they're much lower statistically than in many other cities. But I did notice that there were five homicides over the weekend, including a couple near transit stops. One of those transit stops is not very far from this museum. How would you diagnose the problem, if any? Well, we've diagnosed it before, and we've been dealing with it. In fact, our homicide rate has been cut in half in the last four years. And we haven't just diagnosed it. We've also addressed it.

15:45We've treated it. How are we treating it? Community violence interruption. We've been doing this. We're the best in the country at it, and you've seen our crime rates dropping at a higher rate than many other cities because of it. We have peacekeepers that are in the toughest neighborhoods, right, the ones with the greatest amount of violence. We have organizations that assist those peacekeepers in those neighborhoods. And that work led at times by Arne Duncan and other organization leaders has actually led to a reduction by double digits in virtually every kind of crime that you can name, especially violent crime.

16:25So we are addressing it. Having said that, every crime that gets committed, I mean especially a murder, any kind of harm to the body, any kind of violent crime as far as I'm concerned is a shame. And we ought to be working even harder. But you know how you address it? Not with military troops on the ground who are not trained to do law enforcement, to arrest people. They're not trained to do crowd control. They are trained, and thank God for this, they are trained to go to war and kill people on the battlefield on behalf of the United States. We have one of the greatest national guards in the country here in Illinois.

17:02They are stationed all over the world doing that kind of work, and they get called up in emergencies in the state of Illinois. We are not in an emergency. And indeed, to the extent someone wanted to call what was happening four years ago an emergency, as you've seen, we've done a lot to address that. And indeed, Chicago isn't even in the top 25 of violent cities. Four years ago, of course, that's when the murders peaked in the wake of the pandemic. What's the difference between neighborhoods where crime is still very high and neighborhoods where crime is not? Disinvestment. That is typically what has happened, that those communities don't have jobs, don't have services.

17:38That's where we've tried to make more investment in my administration. And partly I would credit the work that we're doing along with the work of community violence interruption, along with the great work, by the way, of our police and the work that they do with federal law enforcement. But it is disinvestment that has happened over too many years on the west side of Chicago, on the south side of Chicago, and elsewhere. And again, we're doing everything we can to address that on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and annually. And while I'm balancing the budget, we're pushing more dollars into helping people start businesses in those areas, in helping to provide health care and education in those areas.

18:20because those are the things ultimately that we need help with. And I wish Donald Trump would recognize that instead of cutting those things in order to give a massive tax cut to the wealthiest. I can see what you're talking about as I drive around Chicago. The downtown is spectacular, one of the great downtowns in the world. And then last evening, we were driving on the south side, a lot of vacant lots, a lot of vacant stores, a lot of emptiness there. And when you talk about disinvestment, it makes me wonder if sometimes government gets in the way. You may be familiar that a lot of liberals and progressives in the past year have joined conservatives in saying sometimes government is moving too slowly, is too regulatory, is too concerned about harming people to do anything active.

19:02Do you agree with that critique? I couldn't agree more with that critique. Remember, I was in business before I was governor. And so, you know, I'm always looking for a more efficient way to get to the result you're looking for. When I arrived in government in 2019, what I found was that investments were not being made in the right places. Where do you want to make the investments? You want to make the investments in education, number one. Number two, in expanding the economy and job opportunities. Number three, in making people's lives better on a daily basis, health care, making sure that there are services available to them.

19:38Those are investments that I think are hyper important. And again, government often gums up the works. Instead of standing in the way, what we ought to be doing is encouraging the creation of jobs and new businesses and particularly small businesses. Does your own party stand in the way sometimes? Sure, but the Republicans are doing it a lot more than Democrats do, if you ask me. It's why I'm a Democrat. I think that we actually have it more right than the Republicans. Again, government doesn't always get it right. And there are a lot of things that the private sector and private social service organizations do better than government can do.

20:15And we ought to always be weighing, can government do this better or can the private sector do this better? That's something I think we should always be thinking about. But in general, we set the policy at the government level. Like what is it that we want to accomplish? Republicans apparently want to take money away from education. They want to take money away from health care. In my view, we ought to be working to expand health care and education. And again, those are about priorities. Who cares about the middle class? Who cares about the working class? Who cares about the most vulnerable? It's Democrats.

20:46We're the ones who created Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. We're the ones who fight for civil rights and voting rights. And that's our history. That's why I'm a Democrat. I think we do it better than Republicans do. I'm not saying all Republicans are wrong, but I am saying the Trump Republicans are people who are blindly following Donald Trump are apparently missing the fact that he's a narcissist who's really all about himself and not about serving the American people. One of the critiques of the administration is that it is government by plutocrats, by billionaires. Trump himself is thought to be a billionaire.

21:20Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, thought to be a billionaire. Other very wealthy men surround the president. And the idea is that they're in it for themselves and out of touch. As a billionaire yourself, what do you think about that critique? Here's what I will say. I believe it's about your values and not about how much money you have. I think it's clear that I've been fighting for the working class in this state. I have stood up for labor rights. I helped to pass an amendment to our Constitution that protects workers' rights. I have made sure that we raise the minimum wage. Indeed, it's not$7.25 like it is federally.

21:58It's$15 in the state of Illinois. So we've lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. I believe that we ought to make it easier for people to get to work and get home at night. And so before the federal government ever got around to providing infrastructure dollars, I did it in the state of Illinois. So look, Donald Trump, what he cares about is about himself. What Republicans seem to care about is the wealthiest people in the country. What I tried to do was raise taxes on the very wealthiest people in the state of Illinois in order so that we could fund education, so we could fund health care, so we could fund the things that really matter.

22:31So, again, it's about values. It's not about how much money you've got. I'm interested in one aspect of your wealth and how it affects your politics. A lot of people, for better or worse, have been seen as retreating from the president, capitulating to the president, or afraid to speak out. Does your financial security give you more confidence to speak out and push back? All I can say is that I grew up somebody who believes in fighting for social justice. It's part of my religion. It's part of my life. It's what I've been doing for my entire career. Outside of my business, I helped to create early childhood education all across this country.

23:12And now as governor, I've done the very same thing, making sure we're focused on the trauma-filled communities and those very youngest children who need help. But are you concerned personally about retribution? Of course. Are you kidding me? You've seen Donald Trump go after people personally, I mean, and in ways that are literally targeting them, possibly even the idea that they might be arrested and taken away. So, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, though. I helped to build a Holocaust museum. And one of the things I learned working with the Holocaust survivors is that in these challenging moments, you have to decide who you are.

23:50Are you a collaborator? Are you a bystander who's just going to let everything happen? Are you somebody who's going to rescue people? Are you somebody who's an upstander and really fight? And I'm an upstander. I believe that and I think I've demonstrated that as governor and particularly in this difficult moment that we've all got to be standing up and fighting against what is clearly an un-American attempt to attack blue states and blue cities, to attack our way of life by Donald Trump and to in fact effectuate a militarization across this country, bringing troops into cities that ultimately is about the 2026 elections and maybe the 2028 elections too.

24:33If that's the case, is there any way to lower the tension? We'll ask Governor J.B. Pritzker after a break.

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