Pritzker says he'll ‘stand in the way’ of deportation efforts that cross the line

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker criticized the Trump administration’s deportation efforts and dismissed a directive from the White House that elected officials who don’t comply could face prosecution.

“They want people to step back and let them do whatever they want to do,” the Democratic governor said Sunday in an interview on CNN.

Speaking on "State of the Union," Pritzker said Illinois will "stand in the way" of federal efforts that break Illinois law. Of violent criminals, he said, "We don't want them in our state. We want them out of the country. We hope they do get deported, and if that's who they're picking up, we're all for it."

What Pritzker said he finds “quite disturbing, is they're going after people who are law-abiding, who are holding down jobs, who have families here, who may have been here for a decade or two decades, and they're often our neighbors and our friends.”

While saying that Illinois would honor arrest warrants and other proper legal documents, Pritzker referred to the state's Trust Act, which prevents local and state law enforcement from assisting federal officers on immigration and deportation cases.

“We have a law on the books in Illinois that says that our local law enforcement will stand up for those law-abiding, undocumented people in our states who are doing the right thing, and we're not going to help federal officials just drag them away just because” someone thinks they could be in the country illegally, he said.

In the same interview, Pritzker called on Trump to disavow Elon Musk’s mingling with far-right themes, including a gesture Musk made at the inauguration that some saw as a “sieg heil” salute.

“At a moment when anti-semitism is at an all time high in my lifetime, we have a very prominent figure who is very closely associated with the president standing up at a presidential rally and giving two Nazi salutes in a row,” said Pritzker. “If he didn’t mean it, he should apologize.”

Pritzker, who helped found the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, then criticized Musk for following up the inauguration “with jokes” on social media about Nazis and attending a video presentation “with far-right folks who are the most anti-semitic in German politics. …Trump ought to be calling that out.”