Up First from NPR - IL Gov. Pritzker On Crime, Immigration, Trump's 'Power Grab'

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

JB Pritzker is in a battle with President Trump over crime and immigration--or really, Pritzker says, over a power grab. Pritzker has so far blocked Trump's effort to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, but immigration agents have arrived. As they did, Pritzker sat for a wide-ranging talk with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the president, immigrants, Chicago's development, and his party's future.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.This bonus episode of Up First was edited by Reena Advani. It was produced by Adam Bearne. We get engineering support from Gilly Moon. Our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Illinois governor challenges a surge of federal agents in Chicago. People are being grabbed, and they're being thrown into vans. That's different than questioning people. J.B. Pritzker blocked the National Guard, but not immigration arrests. We meet face-to-face in a special edition of Up First from NPR News. Governor Pritzker warned Chicagoans to be alert and take video. He faces criticism from an Illinois father whose daughter was killed in a drunk driving crash with a man lacking legal status.

We'll hear Pritzker's response. We ask what this billionaire thinks of the billionaires in the Trump administration. I believe it's about your values and not about how much money you have. And what does Pritzker think about the possibility of retribution from the White House? Stay with us for a governor

also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028. J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois is in the middle of a battle with the Trump administration, a battle over immigration, or over crime, or Pritzker says, a power grab by the president. We talked about this and more here at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Governor, thanks for joining us, and thanks for welcoming us to Chicago. It's always great to be here.

Great to be with you, Stephen. Glad to have you. I want to understand first if you feel that the president's strategy toward Chicago is evolving in the past few days? It's hard to tell. It's almost like he's bipolar because on one hand, he is attacking Chicago and announces that

this is chypocalypse and he wants to make it like apocalypse now and attack our city. On the other hand, he says, well, maybe I'll go somewhere else. Maybe we'll go to Portland or maybe we'll go to New Orleans. So it's really hard to tell

what's evolving at the White House. But do you think that what's happened is that perhaps he's realized that he cannot legally send the National Guard without your request. And so he perhaps needs to lean more on immigration authorities, which he can send in. I don't know. Donald Trump doesn't seem to follow the law all that much or listen to people who would tell him what's legal and what's not. I hope so, though, because it's not legal for him to send military troops into the city of Chicago. He has sent ICE. They've been here before. As you may know, Tom Homan announced early, in fact,

weeks before Donald Trump took office at a Republican fundraiser that they were targeting Chicago. This is the president's borders are, of course. Indeed. And Tom Homan not only said that, but then when Donald Trump took office, actually did that. Except he showed up here with Dr. Phil. And he brought ICE troops with him, ICE agents, but it's clear that they were ineffective. and that frustrated him a lot. And they went to some other places

where they were trying to effectuate their plan and perhaps were better at it elsewhere. And so I think that frustration has been building that people in Chicago in the neighborhoods here know their rights. And no, they're not opening their doors for an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, but an administrative warrant,

which is simply written by an ICE agent. And so they're coming. coming back and back and back, and now they're, you know, attacking the city again with perhaps up to 300 ice agents. So I'm frustrated by their frustration. All I can say is that they ought to understand that Chicago is a place that's going to protect its people. Is 300 ice agents a lot more than you would normally have doing their job around Chicago? Yes. 300 is a much larger force than they brought the last couple of times. Also, they brought in, you know, new, what's seem to be militarized vehicles that they're using. And the rhetoric around this has been one

of we're attacking the city of Chicago. So I'm very concerned about all of that rhetoric. And I'm concerned that Tom Homan doesn't understand what his job really is. He thinks he's, you know, going after people or says that he's going after people because he thinks they're criminals. But as we know, the vast majority of the people that they detain are not criminals. They're actually just people who live here in Illinois. They may have partially documented situation or they're undocumented. Many, by the way, are fully documented. And now, apparently, they're going to be arresting people who simply speak with a Spanish accent. There is, and you're referring to a Supreme Court ruling, without explanation, overturning a lower court and making it easier for

ICE to continue searches, at least in Los Angeles. What do you think of that ruling? That ruling, to me is a reversal of progress that we've made in this country where we've stood against and effectuated laws that oppose racial profiling. And now you've got federal ICE agents wearing masks, grabbing people off the street who speak with an accent or might be brown or black, and disappearing them. I did not think that we lived in a country like that. But that is, in fact, what they have been doing and what they now intend to do more of. Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court Justice, in what's called a concurring opinion, said it is perfectly reasonable to question someone if they're leaving a construction site

where people who may be here without legal status might be working or if they can't speak English. And if they're legitimate or citizens, you let them go. You think they're questioning them? Because that's not what any of us are seeing in any of the bystander videos that have been made. people are being grabbed and they're being thrown into vans and that's different than questioning people. And oh, by the way, I want to ask a question to everybody who's listening and to you, do you carry with you citizenship papers? How do you prove to somebody that you're a U.S. citizen, your accent, the color of your skin? That's not the country we live in. You know, you shouldn't

have to walk around papers the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany to prove that you belong and that you're not one of them. And that is essentially the kind of country that we're becoming if you allow ICE to simply grab people after racial profiling. We spoke with a priest here in Chicago who is an activist who says they are doing what he calls trainings and encouraging people to carry their IDs at all times. Would you encourage Chicagoans to do that? Look, I'm deeply concerned, particularly for people who have partial documentation, who are here legally, but they may not be U.S. citizens, right? They've got permission to be here. I'm particularly worried for them because nothing that they will carry will be good enough for ICE. And, of course,

I worry about the idea that we're becoming a country where your privacy is no longer appropriate for the government to recognize. And instead, they can simply stop you on the street because of how you look and say, show me that you belong here. Show me that you're a U.S. citizen. That's, again, and not the country that I grew up in. I want to ask a fundamental question about people who are here without legal status. The point of view of the administration and its supporters, many of them, would be those people are here illegally and they should go. If possible, they should all go.

Do you believe that many or most people who are here without legal status fundamentally do belong here and have a place here? Let's start with this. They're arresting people outside of courthouses, people who are going there. in fact, to seek legal status if they don't have it already, or to advance their legal status, maybe they're here temporarily, but they'd like to stay permanently, or they're here permanently, but they'd like to become a U.S. citizen. They're literally stopping people who are trying to follow the legal system to do the right

thing. That's number one. Number two, I believe that people who've been here 10 and 20 and 30 years who've raised families here, who are holding down jobs and paying taxes, who are following the law, they've never been in trouble with the law. I do believe that those are immigrants that we should want to have stay in this country. And we should do everything we can to recognize them and go after people who have committed a crime, especially a violent crime especially, making sure that we're focused on that if it's about fighting crime, let's go after people who actually committed a murder, a rape, some kind of a violent crime, and not just anybody that may seem like they don't belong. In announcing an operation against the city of Chicago in recent days, the administration said they were doing so in honor of Katie Abraham, who was an Illinois resident, killed in a drunk driving incident, and the driver was without legal status in the United States.

And the Chicago Sun Times, one of the papers here, had an article about this young woman and her family and quoted the parents saying, quote, Katie was killed by someone who really could have been vetted and not been in this country and she would be with us today, which I think reflects a widespread view or widespread opinion in some corners about people who are undocumented here. What is your response to that? That you're talking about people who have committed someone who's committed a violent crime. And I just said, we should be identifying them. We should make sure that they get arrested, that they're held accountable for the crimes that they commit. Not just everybody that happens to be here in this country and doesn't look like you or me. We're talking here about immigration, also talking about crime. Do you see the president is combining the two, combining the two, combining?

the two issues or ideas? Clearly, his ends are racist ends. So he is conflating the two because he wants people to think that every person that's here that's not born in the United States is a criminal. That is kind of the veil that he's put over this entire endeavor of deporting people who are immigrants. The reality is that probably your family, probably my family. probably most families in this country. I know the vast majority. In fact, we're immigrants at one

time or another. And the people who are here in this country, and some people are, you know, you talk about an undocumented person. Yes, somebody who has committed a crime who is undocumented, I think we ought to grab and kick out of the country. That's not, violent criminals should not be allowed to stay if they're undocumented. I've said that many, many times. But the idea that every immigrant is a criminal is ridiculous. We're talking about a very small percentage, indeed a smaller percentage of the immigrant population have committed crimes than of the native-born populations here in the United States. So yes, he's trying to conflate the two to meet his nefarious ends, you know, which are, you know, first to effectuate this kind of cleansing of people from

the United States that he doesn't want to have here. And then second, to militarize our cities by backing up ice, sending military troops in. The president keeps saying he would like you to call him. You've said you're not going to call him and ask for the National Guard. But setting that particular request aside, is it worth calling him? Do you have anything to discuss? I've called him before, Steve. Let me just recount history here.

As the pandemic was coming upon us, I call. I called him to ask him for help. I asked for millions of N95 masks. I asked him for thousands of ventilators. They agreed, he agreed, or Peter Navarro on his behalf agreed. One of his AIDS, okay. Yes, that they would deliver those things. They did not.

And that is just par for the course with this administration and with this president, most especially, that he makes promises throughout his career before he was president. He makes promises he enters into contracts, and then he breaches those contracts and breaches those agreements. And I witnessed it firsthand in the worst health emergency that this country has ever seen, or at least in 100 years. And I think he is not to be trusted. I am always happy to have conversation, but in this moment, when he is breaking the law consistently and we're having to take him to court consistently, me calling him and asking for any kind of help or having a conversation about the help that we would need, which, by the way, should be civilian law enforcement help, which we already utilize, ATF, FBI, DEA, but asking for any kind of help or having that conversation with him will become evidence in a case that I was asking for help and therefore he's going to send in

military troops. That's the challenge in this moment. But look, he has been conversing with me by standing up in front of television cameras. I am conversing with him by standing up in front of television cameras. As you can hear, J.B. Pritzker does not believe the president's effort is really about crime in Chicago. But there is crime in Chicago. After a break, we'll ask about five homicides over the weekend. In our visit to Chicago, we talked with Governor J.B. Pritzker about crime. Chicagoans have pointed out that the crime rates are dropping here and that they're much lower statistically than in many other cities.

But I did notice that there were five homicides over the weekend, including a couple near transit stops. One of those transit stops is not very far from this museum. How would you diagnose the problem, if any? Well, we've diagnosed it before, and we've been dealing with it. In fact, our homicide rate has been cut in half in the last four years. And we haven't just diagnosed it. We've also addressed it. we've treated it. How are we treating it? Community violence interruption. We've been doing this. We're the best in the country at it, and you've seen our crime rates dropping at a higher rate than many other cities because of it. We have peacekeepers that are in the toughest neighborhoods, right, the ones with the greatest amount of violence. We have organizations that assist those peacekeepers in those neighborhoods. And that work led at times by Arnie Duncan.

and other organization leaders, has actually led to a reduction by double digits in virtually every kind of crime that you can name, especially violent crime. So we are addressing it. Having said that, every crime that gets committed, I mean, especially a murder, any kind of harm to the body, any kind of violent crime, as far as I'm concerned, is a shame. And we ought to be working even harder. But you know how you address it? Not with military troops on the ground who are not trained to do law enforcement, to arrest people. They're not trained to do crowd control. They are trained, and thank God for this,

they are trained to go to war and kill people on the battlefield on behalf of the United States. We have one of the greatest national guards in the country here in Illinois. They are stationed all over the world doing that kind of work, and they get called up in emergencies in the state of Illinois. We are not in an emergency. And indeed, to the extent someone wanted to call what was happening four years ago in emergency. As you've seen, we've done a lot to address that. And

indeed, Chicago isn't even in the top 25 of violent cities. Four years ago, of course, that's when the murders peaked in the wake of the pandemic. What's the difference between neighborhoods where crime is still very high and neighborhoods where crime is not? Disinvestment. That is typically what has happened. That those communities don't have jobs, don't have services. That's where we've tried to make more investment in my administration. And partly, I would credit the work that we're doing, along with the work of community violence interruption, along with the great work, by the way, of our police and the work that they do with federal law enforcement. But it is disinvestment that has happened over so too many years on the west side of Chicago, on the south side of Chicago,

and elsewhere. And again, we're doing everything we can to address that on a daily basis, on a weekly basis and annually, and while I'm balancing the budget, we're pushing more dollars into helping people start businesses in those areas, in helping to provide health care and education in those areas, because those are the things, ultimately, that we need help with. And I wish Donald Trump would recognize that instead of cutting those things in order to give a massive tax cut to the wealthiest. I can see what you're talking about as I drive around Chicago. The downtown is spectacular, one of the great downtowns in the world. And then last evening, we were driving on the south side, a lot of vacant lots, a lot of vacant stores, a lot of emptiness there. And that,

when you talk about disinvestment, it makes me wonder if sometimes government gets in the way. You may be familiar that a lot of liberals and progressives in the past year have joined conservatives in saying sometimes government is moving too slowly, is too regulatory, is too concerned about harming people to do anything active. Do you agree with that critique? I couldn't agree more with that critique. Remember, I was in business before I was governor. And so, you know, I'm always looking for a more efficient way to get to the result you're looking for. When I arrived in government in 2019, what I found was that investments were not being made in the right places. Where do you want to make the investments? You want to make the investments in education, number one. Number two,

in expanding the economy and job opportunities. Number three, in making people's lives better on a daily basis. Healthcare, making sure that there are services available to them. Those are investments that I think are hyper-important. And again, government often gums up the works. Instead of standing in the way, what we ought to be doing is encouraging the creation of jobs and new businesses, and particularly small businesses. Does your own party stand in the way sometimes? Sure, but the Republicans are doing it a lot more than Democrats do. If you ask me, it's why I'm a Democrat. I think that we actually have it more right than the Republicans.

Again, government doesn't always get it right. And there are a lot of things that the private sector and private social service organizations do better than government can do. And we ought to always be weighing, can government do this better or can the private sector do this better? That's something I think we should always be thinking about. But in general, we set the policy at the government level. Like, what is it that we want to accomplish? Republicans apparently want to take money away from education. They want to take money away from health care. In my view, we ought to be working to expand health care and education. And again, those are about priorities. Who cares about the middle class? Who cares about the working class? Who cares about the most vulnerable? It's Democrats. We're the ones who created Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.

We're the ones who fight for civil rights and voting rights. And that's our history. That's why I'm a Democrat. I think we do it better than Republicans do. I'm not saying all Republicans are wrong, but I am saying the Trump Republicans or people who are blindly following Donald Trump are apparently missing the fact that he's a narcissist

who's really all about himself and not about serving the American people. One of the critiques of the administration is that it is government by plutocrats, by billionaires. Trump himself is thought to be a billionaire. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, thought to be a billionaire. Other very wealthy men surround the president,

and the idea is that they're in it for themselves and out of touch. As a billionaire yourself, What do you think about that critique? Here's what I will say. I believe it's about your values and not about how much money you have. I think it's clear that I've been fighting for the working class in this state. I have stood up for labor rights.

I help to pass an amendment to our Constitution that protects workers' rights. I have made sure that we raise the minimum wage. Indeed, it's not $7.25 like it is federally. It's $15 in the state of Illinois. So we've lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. I believe that we ought to make it easier for people to get to work and get home at night. And so before the federal government ever got around to providing infrastructure dollars, I did it in the state of Illinois.

So, look, Donald Trump, what he cares about is about himself. What Republicans seem to care about is the wealthiest people in the country. What I tried to do is raise taxes on the very wealthiest people in the state of Illinois in order so that we could fund education, so we could fund health care, so we could fund the things that really matter. So again, it's about values. It's not about how much money you've got. I'm interested in one aspect of your wealth and how it affects your politics. A lot of people, for better or worse, have been seen as retreating from the president, capitulating to the president, or afraid to speak out. Does your financial security give you more confidence to speak out

and push back? All I can say is that I grew up somebody who believes in fighting for social justice. It's part of my religion. It's part of my life. It's what I've been doing for my entire career. Outside of my business, I help to create early childhood education all across this country. And now, as governor, I've done the very same thing, making sure we're focused on the trauma-filled communities and those very youngest children who need help. But are you concerned personally about retribution? Of course. Are you kidding me? You've seen Donald Trump go after people personally, I mean, and in ways that are literally targeting them, possibly even the idea that they might be arrested and taken away. So, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, though. I help to build

a Holocaust museum. And one of the things I learned working with the Holocaust survivors is that in these challenging moments, you have to decide who you are. Are you a collaborator? Are you a bystander who's just going to let everything happen? Are you somebody who's going to rescue you people, are you somebody who's an upstander and really fight? And I'm an upstander. I believe that. And I think I've demonstrated that as governor and particularly in this difficult moment, that we've all got to be standing up and fighting against what is clearly an un-American attempt to attack blue states and blue cities to attack our way of life by Donald Trump and to, in fact, effectuate a militarization across this country, bringing troops into

cities, that ultimately is about the 2026 elections and maybe the 28 elections, too. If that's the case, is there any way to lower the tension? We'll ask Governor J.B. Pritzker after a break. So where is the confrontation in Chicago going? And how does J.B. Pritzker think about his own future? Let's listen. Do you anticipate some kind of compromise or accommodation at some point, or do you expect three and a half more years of this? Have you ever seen Donald Trump back away from the crazy ideas of his? I mean, I... Actually, I have.

He does change course. He goes back and forth. I agree. He's bipolar. You're not quite a know. But here's the thing. Again, he might wake up on any given morning and decide Steve Inskeep is who I want to target and go after you.

So you can't trust anything. And so, yes, I think for the next three and a half years, all of us are going to have to stand up and fight because I do not see Donald Trump retreating. Here's the one possible reprieve. If in the 26 elections, Democrats can take control of one or both houses of Congress, that would probably deter Donald Trump from making the kinds of, well, terrible changes to America that he's currently trying to effectuate. I want to ask about a bit of history, recent history. About 2023, when Joe Biden was still running for a second term. There was widespread concern among Democrats that he was too old,

that he might not be able to make it, that he might even yet withdraw. This was before the debate that caused him to withdraw. And there were news stories suggesting that Democrats were looking for a backup candidate and even new stories suggesting that you were the backup. How seriously did you take that possibility in 2023? Oh, I had no aim or desire. I didn't take it seriously other than I'm flattered by the idea that someone might think that I'm, you know, a potential presidential candidate. That's it. How might history have been different if you'd had that opportunity? It's hard to say, Steve. I mean, I'm, listen, the vice president of the United States was the right pick if we had Joe Biden. Kamala Harris were talking about. Right, yeah.

If Joe Biden was going to drop out, Kamala Harris was the right pick for the country. But if we played that moment, if Biden had dropped out a year? earlier, there might have been a primary, a lot of other things might have happened. No, I haven't replayed that moment. I've been busy with the job that I have. And obviously, and I campaigned very hard in the 2024 elections for Democrats and for us to win the presidential election because I know who Donald Trump is. You know, from the very beginning, and indeed when I was running for governor the very first time, you know, I began every speech that I gave because he was president back then. I began every speech that I gave. I began every speech that I gave.

by saying everything we care about is under siege by a racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic president. And I meant it. And I think we're seeing that being effectuated slowly but surely in his first term, he didn't effectuate all of it. Now we're seeing what I think are clear signs that he is actually accomplishing some of what he aimed to do. And if he has his way, we will see, in fact, the, rights of people being taken away even more.

Before this interview, I saw you shaking hands with people and somebody urged you to run in 2028, and I believe your answer was something like, I'm just busy being governor. I want to work around the edges of that question without asking too directly. Do you think, whoever it may be, that a governor should be the Democratic nominee in the next presidential race? I think that there are governors and senators who are qualified to do the job. having been governor for a little while, I can tell you that there are things that governors learn in their executive functions and things that I came into office understanding, having executive positions in the

private sector, that are very helpful in running any kind of organization, especially the largest organization that, well, that exists in the United States, and that's the U.S. government. And I think there's some terrific governors, by the way, that are out there, and you've seen them over the last four, eight years, demonstrate their capabilities. Many of them are friends of mine, and I've worked together. Some of them I've helped to get elected across the country, and I would love to see, you know, any one of them or at one of the senators that has put themselves forward in the past or may going forward. We've got a great bench in the Democratic Party. We just do. It's been a long time since we have the kind of bench that we do right now. And so I'm very pleased

for the future of the country, if any one of those great people gets elected. I want to have an understanding of what you think the next president might need to do. And I understand you would want the next president to do things very differently than the current president that's taken as a given is what you would want. But in our series of interviews, we've heard from other Democrats who have talked about society and government as being, in some sense, broken or not serving people. Pete Buttigieg said he disagreed with the way that Trump is tearing down government agencies, but then said some of them perhaps needed a lot of reform. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she felt that most Americans, most voters, feel that everything they touch is a scam.

Do you see society or government as fundamentally broken and needing radical reform? Reform is absolutely needed. I think the challenge is that tearing it down entirely, which is what Donald Trump seems to want to do, is not helpful to actually serving the needs of ordinary people. Everyday folks, you know, need help with health care. They need help with a better wage. We should have a minimum wage that's appropriate in this country for actually being able to pay the bills. And there are a lot of things that government should do better that it's either not doing or doing poorly today. Did Medicaid need reform? Sure. But taking Medicaid away from literally millions of people. And in my state, potentially 550,000 people. These are mostly working class people. These are mostly people who are poor working people. And Donald Trump wants to take all that away. Should we reform it, though? And the question is that. And the answer is, yes, we should. Now, I just want to say an important thing, what will happen in 2029 if a Democrat becomes president. I believe that we'll take a good hard look, and hopefully before that, lots of

plans being put forward at how do we make health care universal in this country and work for everyone? How do we make sure that people are earning a decent wage? Every Republican that I know is opposed to the minimum wage or opposed to raising the minimum wage. Every Democrat I know thinks that people ought to earn a living wage. Whatever argument you can make is a $10, $15, $20, whatever that number is. It's not $7.25, which is $14,000 a year. And so I think we Democrats do have some pretty good ideas. Here's the thing.

I think we are facing some real challenges going forward that have not been addressed yet. AI is going to affect the future of this country, employment in this country. And we have to ask ourselves, what are we going to do when AI takes the jobs away, from a certain group of people. And it could be quite a lot, adding one, two, three percent unemployment on top of what we all have come to consider as normal amounts of unemployment, 4 percent, perhaps 5 percent. So think of that as possibly 8 percent or 10 percent. Boy, we're going to have to ask the question, what are we doing to address that problem?

And I'm not going to suggest the answer right on this program, but I am suggesting to you that if we don't address that and we don't address the need for universal health care, then we're doing it wrong. Governor, it's a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate you. This has been a special edition of Up First from NPR News. We've heard one of many, many voices that we're listening to in the immigration debate. This is one of our all-platform interviews.

It's a podcast, it's video, and it's on the radio on Morning Edition. This bonus episode of Up First was edited by Rina Advani. It was produced by Adam Bearn. We get engineering support from Gilly Moon, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler. I'm Steve Inskeep. Thanks for joining us. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks?

Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First sponsor-free through Amazon music, Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get upfirst plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.