The Chicago city clerk’s office has disabled the online application for CityKey IDs after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a subpoena requesting information about the applicants.
Fox News Digital reported Tuesday that Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia suspended the CityKey ID application website in response to an ICE subpoena. Valencia announced Friday that her office would take the CityKey online portal offline.
The CityKey municipal ID program, getcitykey.com, allows Chicagoans, regardless of their immigration status, gender identity, or criminal history, to apply for and obtain a local government-issued form of ID — for free.
Now the City Cleark’s “How to Apply” webpage states: “To apply for a CityKey ID, you can use our CityKey online platform to schedule an appointment using the CityKey appointment system to attend an in-person event.”
Democrat-run Chicago, led by Mayor Brandon Johnson, has become a haven for illegal immigrants who are protected under the city’s and state’s sanctuary policies.
Leaders in those left-leaning cities continue to defy and resist the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Johnson recently urged residents to “rise up” in opposition to the legal enforcement of federal immigration laws, Breitbart News reported Friday.
The CityKey ID program was first launched in 2017. According to The Chicago Tribune, it was intended to skirt public records law and protect personal information by only processing applications in person.
Due to the surge of migrants and likely COVID-related restrictions in recent years, the city created an online portal to process applicants — documents that the office is not allowed to destroy under public records law, Fox 32 Chicago reported.
Valencia pulled the plug on the online application portal in response to concerns that the records could be accessed and used by ICE.
“We did hear, ‘Let’s pause the online platform temporarily as we take a pulse and evaluate what’s happening,'” Valencia told the Tribune. “We’re going to assess what’s happening daily and where the climate is, and if we feel we are in a different place, we can easily turn the online platform back on, but we are not going anywhere.”
City officials say they do not have to comply with ICE’s administrative subpoena, but if ICE comes back with a court order it could set off a legal battle, Fox News Digital reported.
Valencia said she and other city officials will fight handing over data to the government. She then claimed in several media reports, “This is Trump doing a witch hunt and intentionally trying to instill fear in people so that they can overtake our democracy.”
In May 2024, the City Council approved a new amendment to the municipal code that added, “Information provided by applicants utilizing the online platform to obtain a City of Chicago ID will be stored.”
Additionally, Illinois began allowing non-citizens, migrants and illegal immigrants to apply for a driver’s license on July 1, 2024, Breitbart News reported in June 2024.
Republicans opposed the law, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed to allow all migrants to get a state driver’s license, over concerns about opening the door to voter fraud. Republican Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer called it a scheme to hide a person’s immigration status from police.
“I think the reality is we’re trying to turn undocumented individuals into documented individuals,” Davidsmeyer said, according to The Capital News.
In related news, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Wednesday visited Chicago’s ICE field office, following a directive by Trump officials to step up enforcement in sanctuary cities including Chicago.
Johnson appeared on Fox’s America’s News Room on Wednesday morning, and posted the video clip on X with the caption:
“Assaults on ICE officers are up 413%, while Democrats label them as domestic terrorists and Nazis. I visited the ICE field office in Chicago today to tell our agents that House Republicans have their backs and are doing everything we can to continue to support these heroes.”
Assaults on ICE officers are up 413%, while Democrats label them as domestic terrorists and Nazis.
I visited the ICE field office in Chicago today to tell our agents that House Republicans have their backs and are doing everything we can to continue to support these heroes. pic.twitter.com/jXZDZLRTMZ— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) June 18, 2025
During his visit, Johnson toured the facility and met with local staff and officers to thank them and discuss efforts to secure the border and enforce immigration policies, according to WGN-9 TV, who had a crew at the House Speaker’s visit.
On Monday, WGN TV News sat down with Sam Olson, field director of Chicago’s ICE field office, to discuss recent immigration crackdowns locally.
Olson told WGN TV News that officers will be in the streets, seven days a week, working to enforce immigration law.
“We have, unfortunately, a lot of targets to go after. There’s a lot of people who are here, that are here illegally with criminal convictions, here with final orders of removal and our officers are out there daily,” Olson said.
Also on Wednesday morning, four Illinois Democratic members of Congress, joined by immigration and human rights advocates, showed up at the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement processing center in Broadview, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Illinois Reps. Danny K. Davis, Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, Delia C. Ramirez and Jonathan Jackson showed their badges and demanded entry into the facility to check on the conditions of the detainees held there. Per The Tribune, they were denied entry into the processing center in Broadview after being told they needed to make a request first with ICE.
“There is no regulation that requires us to give prior announcement or to schedule an appointment,” Garcia told the agent who came out to greet them, with reporters standing by to watch the scene unfold. “We are here by our authority (as members of Congress) and we seek a meeting and an inspection of this facility.”
Advocates from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Organized Communities Against Deportation have raised concerns that some of those detained in Broadview are sleeping on the floor, eating cold food and unable to shower — similar to the conditions migrants experienced when Chicago-area police stations became temporary shelters.
In an Associated Press report from October 2023, over 3,000 new arrivals were sleeping at police stations with hundreds more at airports.
“Some new arrivals stay inside police station lobbies, many sleeping close together on cardboard and sharing bathrooms,” the article states. “Others congregate just outside the stations, sleeping on mattresses or in tents on the sidewalks and adjacent lots.”
Because of the Way Forward Act, a state law enacted in 2021 that prohibits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal deportation authorities, Illinois does not have any detention centers. Detainees typically are transported to a detention center in a neighboring state, according to The Tribune report.
