(The Center Square) – Illinois could be at the center of conflicting agendas under a Trump presidency and Democrat-controlled state. With a Trump administration looking to end sanctuary city policies nationwide, Illinois could be ground zero in the fight.
Illinois law prohibits local and state police from assisting federal agencies in enforcing federal immigration law. The state also uses taxpayer funds to subsidize health care coverage for non-citizens, something that has cost taxpayers more than $1 billion. Costs are expected to continue.
President-elect Donald Trump has made mass deportations and ending policies that foster mass migration a priority for his administration. One way that could be done is by limiting federal grant dollars.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he’d fight any effort from Trump to withhold federal tax funds.
“It would be illegal for the Trump administration from stopping those grants from flowing so we would take action if we saw that happening,” Pritzker said during a news conference Thursday.
Pritzker expects the law to be on the side of stopping such actions.
“Because politics in many cases can’t be imposed upon things that are due to the various states,” he said.
State Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, argued the Biden administration used tax funds to further its agenda. He expects Trump to do the same.
“His new administration is going to use every lever, every leverage that they have to try to turn this country around and to enforce the mandate that he was just given,” Caulkins said.
Trump overwhelmingly won the Electoral College and the popular vote. Republicans are expected to control both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
Caulkins warned Illinois could miss out if its policies controlled by Democrats continue.
“And when the rest of the country booms, when Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, when those states start to boom and Illinois because of the ideology of the governor and the far left in the General Assembly, this place will implode,” Caulkins said.
Trump will take office Jan. 20 with a U.S. Congress in Republican control.