Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. | AP Photo/Matt Marton Rahm vows Chicago will remain immigrant sanctuary

SPRINGFIELD — Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel vowed on Wednesday that Chicago would remain a sanctuary city after President Donald Trump issued executive orders taking aim at illegal immigration.

“I want to be clear: We're going to stay a sanctuary city,” Emanuel said.


Trump's executive orders would triple resources for immigration enforcement and withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities.

“We are going to get the bad ones out, the criminals,” Trump said Wednesday. “The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc.”

Asked about the threat of a federal funding cutoff, Emanuel instead referred to a controversial tweet that Trump sent out a day earlier, in which he pledged to “send in the feds” if the mayor couldn’t get homicides under control in the city.

"I'm going to take the president's offer to give us resources, and that's what I'm going to focus on and hopefully we'll see that," Emanuel said. The mayor said he would be against deploying the National Guard, if that was what Trump intended to offer. He also made clear he’d welcome more resources from federal law enforcement, including the FBI or ATF.

Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer, chair of the Chicago City Council's Black Caucus, invited Trump to go beyond rhetoric through Twitter and commit resources.

“If President Trump is serious about ending the violence problem in Chicago and other cities across this country, he needs to put his money where his mouth — or Twitter account — is,” Sawyer said. “The threat to militarize our communities will be met with the same spirit of fierce resistance as efforts to increase ‘stop-and-frisk,’ register and ban Muslims, and deport millions of immigrants. We remain committed to working with all levels of government to fight for resources for our communities — but not at the cost of our civil liberties or our very democracy.”

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that the president was interested in having a dialogue with Emanuel over Chicago’s violence.

