Illinois Officials Released More Than 500 Criminal Immigrants Despite ICE Detainers, House GOP Report Finds

Illinois and Chicago authorities released more than 500 illegal immigrants from custody rather than cooperate with federal immigration officials, including people accused or convicted of violent crimes, according to a House Judiciary Committee report obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The Republican-led committee’s interim staff report, released Thursday by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), detailed how Illinois’s sanctuary policies prevented state and local authorities from transferring illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The report identified cases in which people released from custody were later accused of murder, domestic violence, robbery, and other crimes.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office released 408 illegal immigrants in 2025 despite active ICE detainers, according to nonpublic records provided for the committee’s 28-page report. The group included criminal illegal immigrants facing charges of domestic battery causing bodily harm, domestic violence, and a firearms offense.

The sheriff’s office did not transfer a single person to ICE despite requests to do so from immigration officers that year, the report found, even after receiving detainers for people accused of crimes including driving under the influence, assault, retail theft, child endangerment, and aggravated assault with a rifle.

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The Illinois Department of Corrections separately released nearly 100 illegal immigrants in 2024 and 2025 without transferring them to ICE, according to information the department provided to the committee.

Those releases included a Mexican national sentenced to 30 years for attempted murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault causing bodily harm, and aggravated kidnapping. Another Mexican national had been convicted of attempted murder with intent to kill, while a third had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for assaulting a child.

The Chicago Police Department received roughly 1,136 ICE detainers, administrative warrants, or requests for advance notice between July 2024 and June 2026. It transferred no one to ICE during that period, according to the report.

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In one case highlighted, Chicago police arrested an illegal immigrant from Ecuador in January 2025 on accusations of assault and luring a child. Police released him rather than honor an ICE detainer, the report said.

Two weeks later, he was accused of tying up, robbing, and killing a man inside a Chicago home.

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