Cracks in a Sanctuary City: How immigration agents are making arrests based on local police data

CHICAGO (WLS) -- No matter how thick the walls are around a sanctuary city, there are cracks that allow immigration agents to make arrests for deportations based on data gathered by local law enforcement.

The ABC7 I-Team found despite a local ordinance and state law prohibiting collaboration between police and other law enforcement agencies in Illinois, and agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), immigration agents can still access and use local police data when making arrests.

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It's a problem that a former Illinois Governor foresaw more than a decade prior, and tried to warn about.

In the week after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, immigration agents flooded across the Chicago metro area, making arrests for deportation or removal from the country.

Those arrested include Jefry Estrada-Pastrana, who was arrested in the Chicago area on Jan. 26, according to court records.

Estrada-Pastrana was accused of re-entering the country after he was deported years prior to Honduras.

According to an affidavit submitted to the court, ICE agents said the path to Estrada-Pastrana's arrest started this past November, when he was pulled over by Chicago police for a traffic stop and fingerprinted.

Those fingerprints "were electronically provided to Homeland Security Investigations," where an analysis was performed and verified Estrada-Pastrana was the same person who was fingerprinted and deported from the United States in 2015.

Despite the Chicago Welcoming City ordinance, and the Illinois Trust Act that are in place to keep local law enforcement from collaborating with federal immigration agents, fingerprints gathered by local police are still leading to arrests like Estrada-Pastrana's.

"That's standard operating procedure," said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

"For better or worse, there are back channels that do exist that enable ICE to receive information from police authorities, and one such avenue is the Secure Communities program," Tsao told the I-Team.

The Secure Communities program was first piloted in 2008 by former President George W. Bush, and it was later expanded in 2011 by former President Barack Obama.

The program provides a direct link for immigration agents into data gathered by local and state law enforcement nationwide, despite any sanctuary city or state policies in place.

The way in for immigration agents is through the FBI.

Since 1924, when local law enforcement scans a person's fingerprint, the departments automatically share those fingerprints with the FBI's Identification Division to check to see if they match suspects wanted on out-of-state warrants, or to learn more about a suspect's criminal history.

But in 2008, the Secure Communities program created a pipeline from ICE into the FBI's database, giving immigration agents unlimited access to the data sent to and collected by the FBI.

When the program was expanded in 2011, it led to anger and protests in Chicago and across the nation.

ICE officials at the time said they only took action when local fingerprints matched a fingerprint of someone already wanted in their system.

"They had to have a previous record," said Jon Gurule, an ICE official who helped set up Secure Communities in 2011. "They had to have had previously been arrested by immigration, a previous criminal conviction... They have to have something that their fingerprints are [ICE's] system already."

Former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn had warned of potential problems, and even requested in 2011 that Illinois counties be disconnected from the Secure Communities program.

In a letter addressed to ICE Director John Morton, dated Aug. 2011 and obtained by the I-Team, Quinn's General Counsel wrote, "Governor Quinn remains deeply troubled that Secure Communities has the opposite effect of its stated purpose. Rather than making our communities safer, the program's flawed implementation divides communities and families and makes the people of Illinois less inclined to reach out to law enforcement."

But Quinn's attempt to disconnect Illinois' data from entering ICE's hands was unsuccessful.

Tsao explained, "Governor Quinn tried to withdraw Illinois from the program, and he was told by the director of ICE at the time that once the jurisdiction is in, you can't get out."

Academic professors who have studied the Secure Communities program told the I-Team the only way to stop the flow of fingerprints would be for law enforcement to stop sending fingerprints to the FBI altogether, a move that's very unlikely.

And since ICE is accessing the data through the FBI, and not going to local or state law enforcement directly, local and state agencies said there is no violation of any local sanctuary ordinances.

ABC7 police affairs consultant and former suburban police chief Bill Kushner said it's out of local law enforcement hands.

"When you arrest somebody... you don't care what his immigration status is. You're not going to ask him what his immigration status is," Kushner said. "He's fingerprinted, and those prints are sent electronically. Now it comes out that there's an immigration hold on him? That's not up to the Chicago police department to enforce."

For Jefry Estrada-Pastrana, the magistrate Judge overseeing his case, the Honorable Gabriel Fuentes, ordered him to be released three days after his arrest, as Fuentes concluded Estrada-Pastrana was not a serious flight risk.

The decision by Judge Fuentes was near identical to a decision made on another recent immigration arrest the ABC7 I-Team covered.

But ICE detainer records show after he was released, Estrada-Pastrana was immediately arrested again by ICE agents but this time, he was sent to a detention facility in Indiana.

That is until last week, when Estrada-Pastrana was no longer listed in custody, meaning he was likely either released, or deported to Honduras.

Have a story tip for the ABC7 I-Team? Call the I-Team news hotline at (312)750-7TIP, or email iteam@abc.com. The I-Team contact form can be found here.