SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in Springfield on Wednesday to decry Illinois’ policies that limit state and local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

“People are dying every day because of these policies. People are evading justice,” Noem told reporters during a news conference on street corner near downtown Springfield. “Governors like JB Pritzker don’t care if gangbangers, murderers, rapists and pedophiles roam free in his state.”

Noem’s event was held near where Emma Shafer, a 24-year-old community organizer, was stabbed to death in July 2023. The alleged killer, who Noem said was in the U.S. illegally at the time of the crime, remains at large.

Noem, who was accompanied by several Republican state lawmakers, was met by about a dozen protesters, including a friend of Shafer’s, who shouted “How dare you use Emma for your racist agenda.”

Noem was undeterred.

“We have to double down at removing dangerous criminals,” she said. “Governor Pritzker has created a sanctuary here for those criminals and invited them here with free health care, free housing, free assistance and facilitated them being protected and brought to justice.”

Pritzker quickly sent out a statement blasting Noem’s event as a publicity stunt.

“Unlike Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, Illinois follows the law,” Pritzker said in the statement.

“The Trump Administration is violating the United States Constitution, denying people due process, and disappearing law-abiding neighbors — including children who are U.S. citizens,” Pritzker said. “Yet, they are taking no real action to promote public safety and deport violent criminals within the clear and defined legal process.

On the eve of Noem’s visit, Pritzker”s office sent out an uncharacteristically snarky e-mail blast to reporters criticizing Noem’s “reality television style of governance” and making a reference to an anecdote in her memoir in which she said she shot and killed her puppy because of its “aggressive personality”

“We would urge all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection while the Secretary is in the region,” the email said.

The Trump administration continues to do battle over Illinois’ immigration policies in the courts. A lawsuit filed against the state and other governmental entities by the Trump administration, which has argued sanctuary policies violate the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which “prohibits Illinois, Chicago, Cook County, and their officials from obstructing the Federal Government’s ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution.”

The lawsuit goes after the state’s 2017 Trust Act, which signed into law by Pritzker’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The law generally prohibits state and local law enforcement from getting involved in deportation efforts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement which is under Noem’s department, or other federal law enforcement agencies dealing with immigration matters.

While the law prevents state and local law enforcement from assisting the federal government with regular immigration enforcement, it allows coordination when there is a federal criminal warrant involved.

But the Justice Department argued the policies obstruct ICE’s ability to acquire judicial warrants by cutting off the agency from information needed to satisfy the heightened standard for such a warrant.

The state argues the U.S. Constitution protects Illinois’ “sovereign right to decline to provide this assistance, and no federal law cited in the complaint overrides the choice Illinois has made.”

Noem’s visit highlighted the sharp partisan divide over immigration policy.

On Tuesday, Republican U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of central Illinois, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called on Illinois sheriffs to defy the state’s sanctuary laws, “uphold President Trump’s federal immigration policies, and cooperate with ICE to deport illegal aliens.”

“We must act now before one more innocent American life is lost or harmed,” she said in a statement.

Republican state Sen. Andrew Chesney, a Trump delegate during last summer’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, said Tuesday that “it’s fantastic” that Noem’s visiting Springfield to criticize him for “rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants,” particularly those with violent criminal records.

“Gov. Pritzker has no interest in this,” Chesney said. “He certainly doesn’t have a track record that supports his interests in curbing the criminal activity.”

Shortly after Noem’s visit, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat, criticized her for visiting Springfield on the same day as the national deadline for air travelers to obtain a REAL ID, another initiative overseen by Homeland Security.

“Instead of dealing with this issue on the day that they’ve implemented this deadline, instead of doing her job, she is traveling around doing vanity stops to make political hits instead of her doing her job,” Giannoulias said. “She’s weaponized the Real ID system, which was meant, by the way, to make us a safer country allegedly.”

Latino lawmakers also condemned Noem’s visit, especially on Latino Unity Day at the state Capitol. They said it was disingenuous to highlight non-citizens as being criminals when most obey the law.

“The fact that they come here, it just gives us another method, another way, to say that they absolutely suck at what they’re supposed to be doing,” state Rep. Edgar Gonzalez, a Democrat representing Chicago’s heavily-Latino Little Village community, said of the Trump administration.

“They’re trying to equate being brown and being Latino with being a criminal, and we understand and we see what they’re doing,” said state Sen. Celina Villanueva, also a Democrat representing Little Village. “This is political posturing that they’re trying to do because of the governor’s stances and also the state’s stance on immigrants in our state.”

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—Tribune reporter Addison Wright contributed.

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