Grasse Enacts New Protections to Protect Due Process, Constitutional Rights from Trump Raids

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill — Locations where everyone should feel safe will be better protected from warrantless immigration raids under a new law backed by state Rep. Nicolle Grasse, D-Arlington Heights, expanding due process protections for all people at hospitals, daycares, courthouses and college campuses.

“What is happening here in our neighborhoods is anti-American, anti-constitutional and inhumane,” Grasse said. “History has shown us that what is legal is not always moral. Every time, it took ordinary people, people who still cared about decency, to stand up and say: ‘No more.’ We are those people now. We must be. Because the measure of a nation isn’t found in how it treats the powerful, it’s found in how it treats our vulnerable. We are a nation built on liberty and due process, not fear and disappearance.”

Grasse’s legislation establishes protections for those without citizenship who are at or near hospitals, courthouses and daycares. The legislation prevents certain federal immigration enforcement actions at the following locations:

• Courthouses: prohibits civil immigration arrests at or near courthouses and provides civil penalties for violations and attorney fee recovery.
• Hospitals: requires hospitals to create formal policies for handling law-enforcement interactions, bars cooperation with immigration enforcement unless there is a judicial warrant and protects immigration-related patient information.
• Daycares: prohibits disclosing immigration information about children or families and requires policies and training to protect children if a parent faces immigration action.

The Grasse-backed House Bill 1312 also allows for a private right of action against agents who, in the process of conducting immigration enforcement, knowingly violate a person’s rights.

Additionally, the legislation bars higher education institutions from disclosing citizenship information, requires staff to be trained on verifying immigration warrants and helps students access immigrant rights resources.

“Our community deserves real safety, the kind that comes from justice, not intimidation. So I stand with every family living in fear, and I stand with every person who still believes that dignity and humanity are not optional, but the very heart of who we are,” Grasse said.

House Bill 1312 was signed into law by the governor earlier today.