SHUTDOWN!
Pritzker/Hernandez law to give illegal immigrants in-state tuition is stopped by court.
Victory for taxpayers in Illinois as a federal judge shuts down Pritzker’s laws allowing illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition and other taxpayer-supported education benefits while denying such to American citizens in other states.
In-state tuition in Illinois has been around for decades. The first version of this law passed in 2003 and approved by all but a few legislators. Overwhelmingly, both Republicans and Democrats voted to give any resident, regardless of citizenship, in-state tuition.
It’s amazing how the debate has changed. More on this later.
Benefits to illegals that are not similarly given to citizens are being litigated around the country.
Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Illinois and this week, ”U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Trump appointee serving in the Southern District of Illinois, sided with the Justice Department, ruling that Illinois’ in-state tuition policies, the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act are “unconstitutional and invalid” as they apply to illegal immigrants,” according to a FOX News article. Illinois is not the only state for which the DOJ is suing them over this benefit.
Despite knowing that in-state tuition was being litigated just this year, an additional provision was added to the law doubling down on giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition in Illinois. The law extends the benefit to illegals who are not necessarily Illinois residents anymore but had graduated from an Illinois high school.
State Rep 50th District (D) Barbara Hernandez sponsored the bill. The photo above is a screenshot from the House floor debate with State Rep Brad Halbrook over the bill. During that debate, Hernandez recognized that the DOJ was suing over giving in-state tuition to illegals, but said that her bill would not be affected by that lawsuit.
Wrong. This decision will shut down all these programs that give non-citizens greater benefits than citizens.
Hernandez represents Aurora. She was also the sponsor of giving illegals a standard driver’s license and allowing non-citizens to become police officers.
Illinois’ RISE Act and DREAM Act
The Illinois RISE Act was one of JB Pritzker’s first bills he signed. It became law in June 2019. If Illinois voters had actually read the bill, would they have agreed to its provisions? In very clear language, the bill gives “scholarships, grants, awards, stipends, room and board assistance, tuition waivers, or other financial or in-kind assistance” to students who are illegal aliens.
If you are curious who voted for this, here are links to the IL Senate and IL House votes.
The DREAM Act was passed in 2011 under Governor Quinn. It allowed the creation of a private scholarship fund for undocumented students. It also allowed parents of DREAMers to participate in the Illinois College Savings Pool and set up a commission to develop scholarships for undocumented kids.
As noted in the opening, here’s the kicker – In 2003, Illinois passed the first law allowing Undocumented or illegal aliens to get in-state tuition, and there was almost no opposition to the bill by Republicans.
The bill passed the IL Senate 55-1 and the IL House 112-4.
The only NO vote in the Senate was Chris Lauzen, the current Kane County Treasurer.
Obviously, there has been a notable change in public sentiment over the last two decades regarding illegal immigrants. The invasion of 10-15 million in just four years under the Biden administration is one of the reasons President Trump won the 2024 election. If closing the border and deporting those who came in illegally is a winning issue, then certainly stopping illegals from accessing taxpayer benefits not available to citizens should be too.
But, instead of pulling back on support for illegals, Illinois Democrats have pushed to hand out more and more and more benefits over the last eight years of Pritzker’s reign. Food stamps, housing, education, legal services, healthcare, advocacy- it’s been a never-ending string of programs to support the illegal immigrant population over American citizens.
In complete disregard for the cost to taxpayers of illegal immigration, AND the cost of American lives such as Katie Abraham, Chloe Polzin, the Claytons, and Sheridan Gorman – the Chicago Tribune penned this op-ed: Editorial: The ICE crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis took an economic toll, too.
The Trib completely misses the other side of any analysis on the cost of illegal immigration!
Much of the editorial was about costs in Minneapolis and the country as a whole – a tactic that makes the reader think these are Illinois costs when they have nothing to do with our state. Finally, when it came to Illinois-specific numbers they wrote:
A Tribune analysis in January pegged the cost of Midway Blitz to federal taxpayers at $59 million, mainly for detaining and transporting migrants, as well as for standby support from the National Guard.
$59 million – compared to the hundreds of millions spent by Chicago and the billions spent by the state of Illinois on illegal immigrants! Of course, the Trib did not offer any analysis of the cost side of illegal immigration. So I will.
These are the numbers for cost just through the end of 2024.
The City of Chicago spent $630 million, and Illinois spent over $2.5 billion.
A day after the Chicago Tribune published their op-ed on the cost of ICE enforcement, they published a news article stating that the City of Chicago spent $630 million on services for migrants.
An audit of Chicago’s migrant response found no major issues with how City Hall spent more than $630 million to house and feed the asylum seekers, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of Inspector General.
Spanning August 2022 to the end of 2024, the review saw the city’s top watchdog analyze receipts on public spending for the at least 46,282 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, who were bused to Chicago by Republican-led states. That crisis ultimately cost $639,654,965, though most of the money did not come from the city budget…
In total, Chicago spent $269.1 million of its Corporate Fund on the migrant mission, or about 42% of the total. Another 29% came from federal grants, 23% from the state and 6% from Cook County.
That is only spending from August 2022-December 2024. And the spending on migrants has not stopped. And the numbers do not include the education costs to CPS.
The state has spent billions of dollars in just three years. An Illinois Policy Institute analysis from June 2025 reported that Illinois spent over $2.5 billion in just the fiscal years of FY22, FY23, and FY24. This cost does not include enhanced education costs for K-12 based on enrollment numbers and special programs for “new arrivals.”
$59 million represents less than 2% of the cost to Illinois taxpayers. And that’s being generous with the costs.
The misguided debate over costs continues as the Chicago City Council has voted to put a question on the November ballot asking voters, if the city should “pursue all lawful means to recover financial compensation from the federal government for the costs and economic harm caused by the Donald Trump administration’s ICE operations.” Center Square Illinois noted in their article:
Alderman William E. Hall explained his reason for the ballot measure is because the September, 2025 ICE operations in the city cost the local government resources.
“It cost our city not only dignity, it also invoked the trauma that can never be paid for. But in addition to that, the resources spent to protect Chicagoans has not only cost us financially, but it has cost a lot of people a lot of nights of no rest,” Hall said.
The measure could allow the city to pursue federal reimbursement for lost tax revenue, public safety and other service costs incurred during Operation Midway Blitz. It passed with only one vote in opposition.
They want to recoup costs from ICE operations. But, taxpayers should want them to stop funding migrants right now and pay at the ballot box for not stopping the funding earlier.
Connecting some more dots
Meet Janio Gionel Velasquez-Muro, a Venezuelan national. Breitbart News reports that he “illegally entered the U.S. during the Biden regime, was arrested in Pingree Grove and charged with stalking, kidnapping, and raping a developmentally disabled 9-year-old girl as she rode her bike outside her home.”
He was arrested in June, but because of Illinois sanctuary policies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had to specifically lodge “a detainer asking Governor J.B. Pritzker and Illinois sanctuary politicians” not to release him from jail.
Think about that. Illinois politicians would rather harbor a violent criminal from deportation that cooperate with ICE.
While other national and local outlets reported on this story, I searched the Chicago Tribune website and could not find any article on the heinous crimes of this illegal.
The same ignorance much of the media displays when reporting on the cost of illegals was present in the protests over the weekend in Chicago and Naperville.
Shoppers enjoying a beautiful summer day in Naperville were dodging protesters who were marching on the sidewalks against ICE. The average age of the protester appeared to be early 70s. They must miss their protest days of the 1970s
The video of the line of protesters has gone viral on social media. Important to note is that there was no similar protest for the nine-year old in Kane County raped by an illegal – that’s not worthy of a protest.
They are instead protesting the killing of people who intentionally and knowingly violated the law by interfering in ICE operations (Renee Good, Alex Pretti) or resisting lawful orders from ICE officers to stop and be examined. The latest case of the latter is the killing in Maine of a citizen from Columbia who was not the intended target of ICE, but who refused to stop his vehicle as requested. The shooting is under investigation.
Make It Make Sense.
My neighbor added a new sign to her yard this week. The sign on the right has been in the ground for months – maybe even a year by now. The sign on the left was just added. As you can see the couple feels so strongly about their position that they have made sure it is lit up at night.
Shockingly, they put up the second sign just as America is celebrating 250 years of declaring our independence. A war was fought to win that independence, I wonder if they know that. The Federalist Papers and anonymous writings by Ben Franklin didn’t win the victory. Only the blood, treasurer and courage of patriots did. I wonder if they think we should not have fought the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and other wars which were moral and necessary to stop evil. This is just another example of Leftist illogic.