The Class Struggle: Illinois Just Made It Legal to Sue ICE for $10,000. Four States Are Positioning to Follow.

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W. A. Lawrence

Dec 10

Illinois just authorized residents to collect $10,000 bounties by suing federal immigration agents. It is the exact strategy that started the Civil War.

Yesterday, Gov. JB Pritzker signed HB 1312 allowing any Illinois resident to sue ICE agents for constitutional violations and collect at least $10,000 plus attorney fees, while creating 1,000-foot enforcement-free zones around every courthouse where federal agents cannot run. When Wisconsin used identical tactics to block enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1859, Georgia cited it in its secession declaration as justification for leaving the Union. California, New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon are now watching to see if they should follow Illinois, and constitutional scholars warn this could fracture the country along state lines in ways not seen since the 1850s.

More than 3,000 arrests in Chicago since September. Only 16 of 614 classified as dangerous. The rest were shopping, commuting, and dropping kids at school.

Operation Midway Blitz produced those numbers, and federal records prove the operation targeted ordinary people rather than violent criminals. Silverio Villegas González was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in Franklin Park. Marimar Martinez was shot by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park before prosecutors dismissed all charges against her. The body count and the arrest statistics together created the political momentum that pushed Illinois to weaponize state law against federal enforcement.

Pritzker signed the law in Chicago’s Little Village surrounded by immigrants, attorneys and state legislators, establishing the 1,000-foot courthouse zones while allowing individuals to sue federal officers with statutory damages of at least $10,000 plus attorney fees and expanding protections at schools, daycare centers, hospitals and universities through required procedures that prevent sharing information or facilitating arrests.

The $10,000 Bounty on Federal Overreach

Judge Sara Ellis has already intervened by issuing a preliminary injunction requiring federal agents operating in Chicago to use body cameras while providing audible warnings before deploying chemical agents or impact rounds and complying with identification requirements, but the new law goes further by creating financial liability for individual agents who violate constitutional rights during enforcement operations. Every agent now runs under the threat of personal bankruptcy if they violate someone’s rights within 1,000 feet of a courthouse.

Democratic States Have Been Building Legal Resistance for Months

California moved the day after Trump’s November 6 election victory when Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session that convened December 2 to establish a $25 million litigation fund designed to fight federal enforcement, while New York renewed executive orders declaring police have no authority to take enforcement actions based solely on immigration status as Attorney General Letitia James began investigating local cooperation that violated state policy. Massachusetts instructed state agencies to avoid assisting enforcement except under judicial orders while Oregon prohibits state and local agencies from participating except in narrow circumstances and grants residents a right to sue if those limits are violated, but Illinois HB 1312 represents the next stage in this evolution because where other states focused on preventing state cooperation with ICE, Illinois created an affirmative right to sue federal agents directly in ways that transform sanctuary protections from defensive shields into offensive legal weapons imposing substantial financial penalties on individual agents.

When States Used These Exact Tactics, the Union Collapsed

Art: Richard Ansdell, “The Hunted Slaves” (1861), Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.

These policies draw directly from the legal tradition built by Northern states resisting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which denied accused fugitives the ability to testify while eliminating jury trials, increasing commissioner fees when they certified a person as enslaved and imposing harsh penalties on anyone who offered assistance, prompting Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to enact personal liberty laws providing habeas corpus protections while guaranteeing legal counsel, requiring jury trials and placing heavy evidentiary burdens on anyone attempting to prove a person was enslaved.

In Ableman v. Booth, the Wisconsin Supreme Court released an abolitionist who had freed a captured fugitive and declared the federal statute unconstitutional, but although the United States Supreme Court overturned that decision and asserted federal supremacy, Wisconsin refused to comply by passing a resolution declaring the Supreme Court’s decision void while continuing to block federal marshals from using state facilities to detain accused fugitives. Southern states watched this defiance with mounting fury until Georgia’s secession declaration explicitly cited Northern states that “have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them” while South Carolina’s declaration condemned states that had “denounced as sinful the institution of slavery” and “encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”

When Wisconsin defied the Fugitive Slave Act in 1859, Georgia cited it as justification for secession. Illinois just revived the same legal tactics.

Contemporary sanctuary laws descend directly from that earlier resistance through the anti-commandeering doctrine affirmed in Printz v. United States, which established that the federal government cannot compel state officials to carry out federal programs, but Illinois has stepped beyond this defensive posture by creating state statutory damages for constitutional violations committed by federal officers during enforcement operations. The deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago over the objections of both the governor and the mayor produced immediate litigation while protests outside the Broadview detention facility grew larger following the shooting incidents as Illinois State Police were deployed to manage demonstrations even while the state simultaneously sued the federal government over the presence of federal forces.

What Happens When the First Lawsuit Hits

When ICE conducts an arrest within 1,000 feet of an Illinois courthouse, the arrested individual will file suit under HB 1312 seeking the statutory minimum of $10,000 plus attorney fees, prompting the federal government to move for dismissal on grounds of sovereign immunity and federal supremacy while forcing an Illinois state court to rule on whether a state statute can impose civil liability on federal officers performing duties authorized by federal law in a ruling that will be appealed regardless of outcome and reach the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals within months.

If other states follow Illinois by creating similar private rights of action against federal agents, ICE will face enforcement in states containing more than 100 million Americans under legal frameworks exposing federal officers to personal civil liability in state courts, which will prompt the Department of Justice to file suit seeking declaratory judgments that these statutes are preempted by federal immigration law and unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause as multiple cases reach the Supreme Court simultaneously.

If the Supreme Court strikes down these statutes, Democratic governors will face a choice between compliance and continued resistance through alternative legal mechanisms, but if the Court upholds them or declines to resolve the conflict quickly, immigration enforcement will fracture along state lines in a manner not seen since the 1850s as federal agents operate freely in states that cooperate while facing coordinated legal warfare in states that resist.

How Citizens Can Pressure State Governments to Act

A coordinated letter-writing campaign to your state attorney general carries substantially more weight than most people recognize because attorneys general possess independent authority to issue legal opinions that shape how state agencies interact with federal enforcement, meaning that if your state attorney general issues an opinion declaring that state employees have no obligation to assist ICE operations, local police departments and state agencies must comply with that directive regardless of the governor’s position.

Organizing these campaigns requires assembling the text of Printz v. United States alongside the relevant provisions of your state constitution and documentation of ICE enforcement actions in your state, then pairing those materials with a clearly articulated request that your governor adopt policies modeled on Illinois HB 1312 using the comprehensive petition toolkits that immigrant rights organizations have developed, which include state-specific statutory citations and model executive orders while remaining publicly available and designed for citizens without legal training to deploy effectively.

Governors respond to political pressure measured in legal exposure and electoral consequences, meaning every signature on a petition creates a constituent on record demanding protective action in ways that become evidence in wrongful death lawsuits if your governor refuses and ICE subsequently conducts an operation producing injuries or deaths, while Democratic governors in blue states cannot afford to be outflanked on immigrant protection by Illinois, California, New York, Massachusetts and Oregon as Republican governors in purple states cannot afford to be seen as facilitating federal operations that produce civilian casualties in their jurisdictions.

Organized petition drives are already underway in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, and New Mexico. If you live in one of those states, find them now. If your state does not have one yet, start it today. The toolkits are free, the stakes are existential, and the window to act is closing.

What This Actually Means for You

If you live in Illinois and ICE stops you within 1,000 feet of any courthouse, you can sue the federal government for $10,000 plus attorney fees starting at once. If you teach, practice medicine or work at a university in Illinois, your institution must now block ICE from accessing records without judicial authorization, and you have legal backing to refuse cooperation.

Illinois fired the opening shot in what legal scholars are calling the greatest test of American federalism since Reconstruction. California has $25 million ready to deploy in litigation. New York’s attorney general is investigating every cooperation incident. Massachusetts is funding a deportation defense. Oregon is daring Washington to sue.

The question is not whether other states will follow. The question is how many, how fast, and whether the Supreme Court will stop them before enforcement becomes impossible in states having half the country’s population.

The Fugitive Slave Act collapsed when enough Northern states refused to enforce it. The same legal mechanism is being deployed right now across America’s largest Democratic states. Wisconsin’s defiance in 1859 gave the South justification to secede. Illinois just placed the same bet, and this time there are four more states ready to double down.

History does not repeat itself with precision, but it rhymes with remarkable consistency. This rhyme is about shatter windows.

SOURCES

Illinois HB 1312: