Midwest
Pritzker signs bill to further shield illegal immigrants in Illinois from deportations
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Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday signed a sweeping bill aimed at further shielding illegal immigrants in the state from deportation, creating new safeguards at courthouses, hospitals, day cares and university campuses to limit civil immigration enforcement.
Pritzker signed HB 1312 at Chicago’s Little Village alongside bill sponsors, officials, and community advocates.
“With my signature today, we are protecting people and institutions that belong here in Illinois. Dropping your kid off at day care, going to the doctor, or attending your classes should not be a life-altering task,” said Pritzker in a press release. “Illinois — in the face of cruelty and intimidation — has chosen solidarity and support. Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and Gregory Bovino have tried to appeal to our lesser instincts. But the best of us are standing up to the worst of them.”
HB 1312 creates new protections across Illinois institutions most impacted by civil immigration enforcement.
BORDER PATROL CHIEF FIRES BACK AFTER PRITZKER CALLS FEDERAL OPERATIONS ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL INVASION’
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker speaks during a press conference amid reports of federal deployments to Chicago Sept. 2, 2025. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)
The law allows people to sue officers if they believe their constitutional rights were violated. It prohibits civil arrests in and around courthouses for those attending certain state proceedings, and strengthens privacy rules at hospitals by requiring policies governing interactions with law enforcement.
It also restricts universities and day care centers from sharing a person’s immigration status unless required by law, and compels them to adopt protocols for handling federal agents by early 2026.
Residents confront federal agents and Border Patrol agents over their presence in their neighborhood on Atlantic Blvd. in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell. (Getty Images)
“If Pritzker the Slob focused on fixing crime in his own state instead of defending criminal illegal aliens, Illinois residents would be much safer,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Cracking down on crime and deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens should not be a partisan issue, but Democrats suffering from TDS are trying to make it one, all at the expense of the Americans they are elected to serve.”
LARGEST EVER ICE OPERATION RESULTS IN NEARLY 1,500 ILLEGALS ARRESTED IN BLUE STATES
President Donald Trump told CBS News in November that he believes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids “haven’t gone far enough” when asked about the federal agency’s tactics that have sparked protests and lawsuits.
The Trump administration has conducted immigration raids across major U.S. cities as part of the president’s campaign pledge of mass deportations, though the White House maintains agents are targeting only criminal migrants considered the “worst of the worst.”
Fox News previously reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, senior adviser Corey Lewandowski and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino have pushed for a broader and more aggressive immigration enforcement approach, targeting anyone in the U.S. illegally to boost deportation numbers.
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, told Fox News Digital that Pritzker must be “unfamiliar with the US Constitution.”
“Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, still clearly states: ‘This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land.’”
“By signing this law, Pritzker violated the Supremacy Clause, his oath he took as Governor to ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ — which itself falls under the oaths clause of the Constitution,” said McLaughlin. “We hope the headlines, social media likes, and fundraising emails he did this for are worth it!”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Thursday said the Trump administration is doubling down on security in Chicago and Portland and is looking at purchasing more buildings for federal law enforcement to operate out of in both cities. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters; Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Trump told CBS News he believes his immigration mission will be complete once “many” of roughly 25 million people are deported.
“Well, it takes a long time, because, you know, probably I say 25 million people were let into our country. A lotta people say it was 10 million people. But whether it was ten or – I believe I’m much closer to the right number,” he said. “Of the 25, many of them should not be here. Many of them.”
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Illinois
Illinois high school football playoffs expanding in 2026
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (KWQC) – The IHSA football playoffs will be expanding by 50 percent in 2026.
IHSA member schools approved an amendment to expand the playoffs from 32 teams per class to 48.
There will still be 8 classifications increasing the total number of playoff teams from 256 to 384.
As a result of the change, the start of the season will be moved up by a week in August to allow the season to still finish with State Championship games the week of Thanksgiving.
Copyright 2025 KWQC. All rights reserved.
Indiana
Freshmen from Indiana show potential in UConn-Butler game: ‘Heck of a player’
Former UConn forward, NBC Sports broadcaster Donny Marshall knows a thing or two about talented UConn guards.
The former Husky played for legendary coach Jim Calhoun and was teammates with the fifth pick in the 1996 NBA Draft, 10-time NBA All-Star Ray Allen. Watching UConn play against Butler on Tuesday night, Marshall said he sees a lot of Allen in reigning Indiana Mr. Basketball Braylon Mullins.
Mullins made the second start of his career against the Bulldogs. The former Greenfield-Central star missed UConn’s first six games of the regular season with an injury, but the 6-foot-6 guard is quickly coming into his own and showing why he’s a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA Draft.
Against Butler, Mullins showed off his sweet jump shot, going 2 for 5 from 3-point range. He finished with 12 points, three rebounds, two assists, two blocks and one steal.
“He’s a scorer,” Butler coach Thad Matta said of Mullins. “He’s got a scorer’s mentality. He gets his shot off quick. They move him around and create some angles for him. Obviously, he’s a heck of a player.”
Mullins did most of his damage in the first half, scoring eight of his 12 points before halftime. The former five-star recruit was the highest-ranked player in UConn’s 2025 class. Butler’s top-ranked recruit, Azavier “Stink” Robinson isn’t the NBA prospect Mullins is, but he held his own after a shaky start to the game.
Robinson has been thrust into the starting lineup with starter Jalen Jackson out for the season with an ankle injury. Robinson looked out of sorts at times in the first half, going scoreless with two assists and a turnover. In the second half, Matta moved him off the ball, giving him catch-and-shoot looks, and opportunities to drive to the basket without worrying about running the offense.
The former Lawrence North star responded with one of the better halves of his career, scoring 10 points on 3 for 6 shooting, including 2 for 5 from 3 to go along with two rebounds, one assist, one steal and one turnover.
Facing a veteran team like UConn, nothing comes easy. UConn’s guards harass ball handlers and getting into an offensive set is not easy. This time last year, Robinson was still in high school and, on most nights, the most athletic player on the court. Playing a UConn team where the goal is a national championship, Robinson was forced to grow, and he did not back down from the challenge in the second half.
“He’s coming along,” Matta said of Robinson. “That’s the first Big East road game of his career against maybe the best team in the country. It tells you how tough he is. He’s resilient. He keeps going.”
Iowa
I-80 crash cleanup continues after weekend pile-up in eastern Iowa
WEST BRANCH, Iowa (KCRG) – Cleanup crews are still working to remove vehicles from Interstate 80 in eastern Iowa following multiple crashes that blocked the highway for about 12 hours Saturday morning.
Multiple crashes on I-80 east of Iowa City Saturday morning shut down the interstate for several hours in both directions. No one was killed, but dozens of people were injured and taken to the hospital.
Lanes in the area will be closed in order to pull crashed cars out of the median.
“Towing and recovering efforts started right away after the storm, Sunday night after the storm and have continued each night since then and we’re estimating a couple, two to three more nights yet to get everything removed out there,” said Mitch Wood with the Iowa Department of Transportation.
DOT explains highway closure decision
The DOT did not expect conditions to be as bad as they were this weekend. Access to the highway was only limited after the crash happened.
“It started out with just a typical Iowa snowfall forecast. Nothing in that forecast, I guess, rose to that level of alarm for us to kind of forecast that we would have seen the traffic issues that we ended up seeing,” Wood said.
The DOT says preemptively closing the interstate can be done if unsafe travel can be predicted.
“What we could never really anticipate is the driving conditions changing rapidly and how drivers are going to respond to that,” Wood said.
Wood says shutting down an interstate is never a light decision.
“It’s not something that we necessarily want to do but when we make that decision, almost everytime we’re making that decision for safety reasons,” Wood said.
Cleanup of those accidents from Saturday are still underway. That typically happens in the evening, so drivers should watch for signs and lane closures when towing is happening.
Copyright 2025 KCRG. All rights reserved.
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