When Mayor Brandon Johnson lands in the nation’s capital this week to testify at a Republican-led hearing on sanctuary cities, he will be walking into one of the riskiest arenas of his political career.
On Wednesday, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will put Johnson and three other Democratic mayors in the hot seat, where GOP members will try to score political points off them over their respective laws blocking local police from assisting in immigration enforcement.
It will be the first time a sitting Chicago mayor testifies before Congress since Richard M. Daley. Johnson will be in a high-pressure spot as he faces questioning from Republican congressmen eager to curry favor with President Donald Trump, who has made his disdain for Chicago and other sanctuary cities a central plank of his administration.
Underscoring the made-for-TV feel of the event, the Oversight panel released a video trailer last week featuring a clip of committee Chair Rep. James Comer declaring, “(If) they’re going to continue to disobey the law, then I think we should cut as much of their federal funding as we can cut.”
The dark teaser cycles through a cacophony of headlines about migrants accused of crimes in the four cities before blasting in a giant font: “GAME ON.”
And looming over the political theater Wednesday will be the Department of Justice’s ongoing lawsuit against Chicago over that same sanctuary policy, adding an extra layer of peril to Johnson’s testimony under oath.
If the first-term mayor handles himself well, his performance could help boost his political brand at a time when his progressive agenda at home is floundering. Still, some are puzzled over why he would agree to a Republican-controlled forum that could devolve into a frenzy from partisans hungry for their next viral sound bite.
“This whole thing isn’t a legitimate process. It’s a circus, and the mayor is walking into the ring,” said Aviva Bowen, a Chicago-based Democratic strategist who has doubts that a strong testimony can paper over his local setbacks. “Mayor Johnson is going to represent Chicago, right, when the vast majority of Chicagoans don’t want him representing them. That’s a problem.”
Johnson has brushed off worries about his upcoming performance and stuck to his signature rhetoric as the son of a pastor when discussing the challenge ahead: “This current administration is the tempter at the end of a 40-day fast. We’re going to hold to our values.”
“Whether or not we can get our message across in that particular room doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop delivering the message of hope,” the mayor told reporters last week. “I don’t care which congressperson believes in that or not. It doesn’t sway my belief that there are good, decent people in this city and across America who deserve their government to show up for them.”
When Comer, R-Ky., first invited the mayors of Chicago, New York City, Boston and Denver to testify on “their misguided and obstructionist policies” that prohibit local cops from cooperating with federal immigration agents, Johnson initially hedged before announcing — along with the other three Democrats — that he would go.
The next day, Trump’s administration went to court against the state of Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago over their sanctuary policies.
Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance bans official cooperation between local law enforcement and federal deportation authorities, while ensuring immigrants living in the country without legal permission can use city services. Similar policies are codified in state and county laws.
The White House’s immigration crackdown comes as no surprise after Trump’s team vowed to go after Democratic-led cities that have implemented sanctuary policies, even though the courts have generally determined such policies to be constitutional.
Outside the legal battlefield, the White House and congressional Republicans are also threatening to withhold federal resources from blue municipalities.
“It’s just going to be, quite frankly, a s—- show,” mayoral critic Ald. Gilbert Villegas said of the hearing. “There’s nothing to gain here, and it’s just going to further continue to allow Trump and the Republicans to further bash Chicago.”
If Johnson had snubbed the committee, it could compel his testimony with a subpoena, though it rarely resorts to such measures.
George Washington University professor Casey Burgat, a former congressional researcher, said there are two reasons Congress calls hearings: the “good, Schoolhouse Rock version” to bring in expert testimony and shape legislation, and “for political purposes … to draw attention — especially partisan attention — to an issue.”
Wednesday’s hearing by the Oversight Committee, which is not the panel that typically deals with immigration matters, falls in the latter category, Burgat said.
At the same time, the mayor of Chicago ducking a congressional hearing would invite a whole other set of attacks, said Ald. Andre Vasquez, “so it makes sense” to take on the challenge.
Vasquez said he texted Johnson after learning of his attendance and offered to help prepare him for the tough questioning. The progressive alderman was handpicked by the mayor to lead the City Council’s Immigration Committee but has since butted heads with the administration over how to handle Chicago’s migrant crisis and more.
The mayor did not respond, Vasquez said.
“I think he’s got his team that he wants to rely on, but the stakes are that high, right?” Vasquez said. “We are kind of all watching with bated breath in hopes that he’s able to walk that fine line that’s needed in this moment.”
At his weekly news conference last week, Johnson said he reached out to his predecessor Lori Lightfoot, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jonathan Jackson for advice.
Also on the list of those the mayor said he’s called: Jesus.
“I’m talking to everyone. This is about Chicago. This is not about Brandon Johnson,” the mayor said. “I am part of a long legacy of leaders in this city, in this state, that have stood up for working people. And that’s essentially what I’m prepared to do on March 5.”
His message of uplifting the poor may elicit scorn in the Oversight Committee, which was once seen as bipartisan but now routinely tackles highly politicized issues and seats some of Trump’s most well-known attack dogs: Reps. Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace.
Ald. Michael Rodriguez, who represents a large Mexican immigrant community in Little Village, said he hopes Johnson doesn’t take the bait and sticks to a message of “building bridges and not walls.”
“Look, part of me wanted him to go. Part of me doesn’t want him to go. Ask me how I feel about it after he goes,” Rodriguez said. “There are people like (Greene) and others of her ilk who want quick sound bites for their antagonistic, anti-Democratic and divisive politics, and they’ll try to score those points, but we have nothing to be ashamed of. We should actually celebrate our status as a welcoming city.”
Johnson, who charted an unconventional political trajectory from labor organizer to the fifth floor of City Hall, has repeatedly weathered rough seas during the first two years of his term. His tenure has seen City Council meetings derailed by aldermen openly defying him or angry constituents shouting insults at his leadership abilities, often over his decision to house and feed asylum-seekers with taxpayer resources.
The humanitarian crisis sparked by the more than 51,000 migrants who made their way to Chicago since 2022 — when GOP Gov. Greg Abbott sent his first busload of asylum-seekers from Texas — was one of the mayor’s most onerous predicaments upon entering office. The city lacked funding to care for the families as they camped outside police stations while waiting for shelter beds, but did not see the influx of migrants slow until early last summer.
Now, the Johnson administration touts the successes of the mission as proof that pro-immigrant values prevail. But congressional Republicans seeking Wednesday to prove a narrative of sanctuary policies sowing destruction in cities will likely lambast the costly effort, even though the Welcoming City ordinance did not apply to most of the recent arrivals from Venezuela because they had legal authorization to cross the U.S. border and remain in the country as asylum seekers.
All four mayors scheduled to testify have at times vigorously defended immigrants and decried attempts to deport them, but their circumstances differ considerably.
New York Mayor Eric Adams will likely command outsized attention as the top executive of the country’s most populous city — and one who is under indictment for alleged corruption and bribery. Trump’s Justice Department has moved to dismiss the charges, but Adams would still face the constant threat of federal prosecutors refiling the case if he doesn’t cooperate with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Meanwhile, Mayor Mike Johnston has encouraged Denver residents to thwart the Trump administration’s deportation actions with civil disobedience and even said he’s willing to be arrested for standing in the way. And Mayor Michelle Wu, a native of suburban Barrington, stridently defended Boston as “the safest major city in the country” to push back on Republican assertions that sanctuary cities are “lawless.”
Both supporters and critics of the mayor say they suspect the Republicans will target Johnson given his stature as America’s most progressive big-city mayor.
Ald. William Hall, another Johnson ally, asserted that “Chicago has prepared him to speak to the nation” because members and spectators at City Council meetings are “actually meaner” than the politicians in Washington.
“If you can make it in Chicago, you can make it anywhere,” Hall said.
Vock is a freelance reporter.
