The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund will receive an $80,000 payout after representing an illegal immigrant couple whose former Chicago landlords threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them.
The landlords were banned from discriminating against tenants based on actual or perceived immigration status under the Illinois Immigrant Tenant Protection Act of 2019, according to a Thursday report from NBC News.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Catherine Schneider ruled that landlords Marco Antonio Contreras and Denise Contreras had to pay damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs, for violations of that law.
Maria Maltos Escutia and Gabriel Valdez Garcia, a couple who lived together, had sued them in 2022 under the statute, which bars landlords from threatening to report tenants to immigration authorities.
The complaint said that the Contreras “wrongfully threatened to report Plaintiffs to ICE with the intent to harass, intimidate, and induce them to pay rent and surrender possession of the premises,” per NBC News.
Maltos Escutia and Valdez Garcia said in a statement that “we decided not to stay silent because our landlords threatened us with calling immigration, and we do not believe that anyone has a right to threaten us.”
“No one should feel or act superior to others. We are all equals and deserve respect,” the statement added.
“Just because someone is your landlord does not mean that they get to do whatever they want to you.”
Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, likewise said that “such unscrupulous conduct is appropriately unlawful under Illinois state law.”
Should the pro-illegal immigrant law be struck down and the order against the Contreras reversed?
Yes: 98% (2000 Votes)
No: 2% (32 Votes)
He added that the judgment “provides a measure of justice to a family facing a landlord willing to threaten to call federal immigration authorities in the belief that it would scare tenants.”
The decision in this case and the hefty $80,000 in damages comes as President Donald Trump’s administration works to deport illegal aliens.
As border czar Tom Homan and other officials have pointed out, it’s a federal crime to enter the United States illegally and without going through the proper channels.
That crime subjects violators to deportation.
Perhaps there is an argument for protecting legal immigrants from discriminatory conduct, but there is no good argument for banning the reporting of criminal conduct to the proper authorities, in this case reporting known illegal aliens to ICE.
To what other law, civil or criminal, would such a statute apply?
If someone had been conducting any other type of illegal conduct in the property owned by the Contreras, they would have every right, and likely the duty, to report that conduct.
But lawmakers in Illinois have decided that some types of law-breakers should receive special protections under the law.
In this case, Americans were treated as second-class citizens as a result.
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