Justice Department attorneys stayed the legal course charted by Biden administration, though they didn’t directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug that’s part of the nation’s most common method of abortion.

Rather, the government argued the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

“The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper, but the states’ claims before this court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” federal government attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri argues that Food and Drug Administration should roll back access to mifepristone. They filed their complaint after the Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone last year. They want the FDA to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone, require three in-office visits and restrict the point in a pregnancy when it can be used.

The case is being considered by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, a Trump nominee who once ruled in favor of halting approval for the drug.

Kacsmaryk’s original ruling came in a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion groups. It was narrowed by an appeals court before being tossed out by the Supreme Court, which found the plaintiffs lacked the legal right to sue.

The three states later moved to revive the case, arguing they did have legal standing because access to the drug undermined their abortion laws.

But the Department of Justice attorneys said the states can’t just piggyback on the earlier lawsuit as a way to keep the case in Texas.

Nothing is stopping the states from filing the lawsuit someplace else, attorney Daniel Schwei wrote, but the venue has to have some connection to the claims being made.

Besides, Schwei wrote, the states are challenging actions the FDA took in 2016, when it first loosened restrictions on mifeprostone. That’s well past the six-year time limit to sue, he said.

Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in Idaho. Missouri had a strict ban, but clinics recently began offering abortions again after voters approved a new constitutional amendment for reproductive rights. Abortion is generally legal up to 22 weeks in Kansas, where voters rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure in 2022, though the state does have age restrictions.

Trump told Time magazine in December he would not restrict access to abortion medication. On the campaign trail, said abortion is an issue for the states and stressed that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion in 2022.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on abortion seems to have shifted at times, drawing criticism from both abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces. During his first confirmation hearing in January, he repeatedly said, “I have always believed abortion is a tragedy,” when pressed about his views.

Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

Over the weekend, Trump accused other countries of “stealing the movie-making capabilities” of the U.S. and said that he had authorized the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of implementing this new import tax on all foreign-made films. But further specifics or dates weren’t provided. And the White House confirmed that no final decisions had been made as of Monday.

Trump later said that he would meet with industry executives about the proposal but a lot remains unclear about how an import tax on complex, international productions could even be implemented.

If imposed, experts warn that such a tariff would dramatically hike the costs of making movies today. That uncertainty could put filmmakers in limbo, much like other industries that have recently been caught in the crosshairs of today’s ongoing trade wars.

Unlike other sectors that have recently been targeted by tariffs, however, movies go beyond physical goods, bringing larger intellectual property ramifications into question. Here’s what we know.

Why is Trump threatening this steep movie tariff?

Trump is citing national security concerns, a justification he’s similarly used to impose import taxes on certain countries and a range of sector-specific goods.

In a Sunday night post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that the American movie industry is “DYING to a very fast death” as other countries offer “all sorts of incentives” to draw filmmaking away from the U.S.

Trump has previously voiced concern about movie production moving overseas. And in recent years, U.S. film and television production has been hampered between setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood guild strikes of 2023 and the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Incentive programs have also long-influenced where movies are shot both abroad and within the U.S., with more production leaving California to states like Georgia and New Mexico — as well as countries like Canada.

But unlike other sectors targeted by Trump’s recently-imposed tariffs, the American film industry currently holds a trade deficit that’s in the U.S.’s favor.

In movie theaters, American-produced movies overwhelmingly dominate the domestic marketplace. Data from the Motion Picture Association also shows that American films made $22.6 billion in exports and $15.3 billion in trade surplus in 2023 — with a recent report noting that these films “generated a positive balance of trade in every major market in the world” for the U.S.

Last year, international markets accounted for over 70% of Hollywood’s total box office revenue, notes Heeyon Kim, an assistant professor of strategy at Cornell University. She warns that tariffs and potential retaliation from other countries impacting this industry could result in billions of dollars in lost earnings and thousands of jobs.

“To me, (this) makes just no sense,” she said, adding that such tariffs could “undermine otherwise a thriving part of the U.S. economy.”

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents behind-the-scenes entertainment workers across the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement Monday that Trump had “correctly recognized” the “urgent threat from international competition” that the American film and television industry faces today. But the union said it instead recommended the administration implement a federal production tax incentive and other provisions to “level the playing field” while not harming the industry overall.

How could a tax on foreign-made movies work?

That’s anyone’s guess.

“Traditional tariffs apply to physical imports crossing borders, but film production primarily involves digital services — shooting, editing and post-production work that happens electronically,” notes Ann Koppuzha, a lawyer and business law lecturer at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business.

Koppuzha said that film production is more like an applied service that can be taxed, not tariffed. But taxes require Congressional approval, which could be a challenge even with a Republican majority.

Making a movie is also an incredibly complex — and international — process. It’s common for both large and small films to include production in the U.S. and in other countries. Big-budget movies like the upcoming “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” for instance, are shot around the world.

U.S. studios frequently shoot abroad because tax incentives can aid production costs. But a blanket tariff across the board could discourage that or limit options, Kim said — hurting both Hollywood films and the global industry that helps create them.

“When you make these sort of blanket rules, you’re missing some of the nuance of how production works,” added Steven Schiffman, a longtime industry veteran and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “Sometimes you just need to go to the location, because frankly it’s way too expensive just to try to create in a soundstage”

Schiffman points to popular titles filmed outside the U.S. — such as Warner Bros’ “Harry Potter” series, which was almost entirely shot in the U.K. “The cost to have done that would have like literally double to produce those movies under this proposed tariff,” he said.

Could movie tariffs have repercussions on other intellectual property?

Overall, experts warn that the prospect of tariffing foreign-made movies ventures into uncharted waters.

“There’s simply no precedent or sense for applying tariffs to these types of creative services,” Koppuzha said. And while the Trump administration could extend similar threats to other forms of intellectual property, like music, “they’d encounter the same practical hurdles.”

But if successful, some also warn of potential retaliation. Kim points to “quotas” that some countries have had to help boost their domestic films by ensuring they get a portion of theater screens, for example. Many have reduced or suspended such quotas over the years in the name of open trade — but if the U.S. places a sweeping tariff on all foreign-made films, these kinds of quotas could come back, “which would hurt Hollywood film or any of the U.S.-made intellectual property,” Kim said.

And while U.S. dominance in film means “there are fewer substitutes” for retaliation, Schiffman notes that other forms of entertainment — like game development — could see related impacts down the road.

Others stress the potential consequences of hampering international collaboration overall.

“Creative content distribution requires thoughtful economic approaches that recognize how modern storytelling flows across borders,” notes Frank Albarella, U.S. media and telecommunications sector leader at KPMG. “The question hanging over every screen: Might we better nurture American storytelling through smart, targeted incentives, or could we inadvertently force audiences to pay more for what could become a narrower creative landscape?”

AP Writers Jake Coyle and Jill Colvin in New York, Aamer Madhani in Palm Beach, Florida and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

Chipparoni is the president and CEO of Res Publica Group, a PR firm whose major clients include the White Sox, Lollapalooza parent company C3 and the Wirtz family’s corporation, which owns the Blackhawks, co-owns the United Center and operates Breakthru Beverage Group. He declined to comment, as did a Choose Chicago spokesperson. Crain’s Chicago Business first reported the news.

The appointment should coincide with Choose’s annual meeting, where the organization’s new CEO, Kristen Reynolds, will also be sworn in. Sources familiar with Chipparoni’s appointment said he would be a natural local complement to Reynolds, a Texas native who has worked in Arizona and Long Island’s equivalent tourism organization for more than a decade.

There has been no permanent CEO at the organization for more than a year. After Lynn Osmond stepped down at the end of January 2024, board member and former Chicago Tribune executive Rich Gamble has served in an interim role.

Glenn Eden, the current board chair, wrote to fellow board members to give notice that Johnson had slated Chipparoni and Barrett for the seats, and that Chipparoni’s term would begin on July 1. Board members can serve up to two, three-year terms.

Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Chipparoni, a press aide to former Gov. Jim Edgar, was previously a member of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and also chaired Navy Pier and its marketing committee.

Barrett, chief diversity and engagement officer for developer Sterling Bay, recently served as a senior adviser to the Chicago host committee for the DNC. She previously was deputy director of the Heartland Alliance, national press secretary for Rainbow PUSH and was director of communications for the Congressional Black Caucus.

“There is a mess in Washington right now and we need to send someone who will fight for all of us in Illinois, but that person will not be me,” Frerichs wrote in an email to supporters.

“After many conversations with friends, and lengthy talks with my wife, I have reached the decision that the answer is no,” he wrote. “I am not willing to travel to Washington, D.C., 30-some weeks a year and spend so many nights away from my children. I don’t want to miss their games, their recitals, or even that many bedtimes.”

Frerichs, a native of Gifford in central Illinois and a former Champaign County auditor and state senator who later moved to Chicago, remarried in 2022 and has twin 2-year-old sons as well as a college-age daughter from his first marriage.

Frerichs said he “aspired to follow in Sen. Durbin’s footsteps” and said he was “humbled at the outpouring of support” following the April 23 announcement by the state’s senior senator that he would not seek a sixth senate term.

So far, two-term Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton is the only announced Democrat seeking to replace Durbin, although three members of Congress — U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg, Robin Kelly of Matteson and Lauren Underwood of Naperville — also are considering a bid for the party’s March 2026 nomination.

Stratton, who has the backing of billionaire Gov. JB Pritzker, announced Monday she had named Laura Ricketts and her spouse, Brooke Skinner Ricketts, as among four co-chairs of the campaign’s finance committee. Laura Ricketts is a board member of the Chicago Cubs ownership and she is lead owner of the Chicago Red Stars women’s soccer team. Ricketts is also a Chicago Sky women’s basketball team co-owner

“This is the official — that I’m not going to run again for Congress,” Schakowsky said to a crowd of about 1,000 people attending an Ultimate Women’s Power Luncheon event she hosted at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Hotel. “As much as I love and have loved being in the Congress of the United States, such an incredible, incredible privilege to work with the people of the district, to learn from them, to be an organizer, to be a fighter — well, that will never end. But I have made the decision that I am not going to seek reelection this time.”

The move marks the end of an era for a reliably Democratic district that Schakowsky, 80, of Evanston, has represented since 1999 after soundly defeating two opponents, including JB Pritzker, in an open-seat primary. Before her, Sidney Yates held the seat for 24 terms, almost 50 years.

Her retirement will undoubtedly set off a series of political maneuvers. Even before Schakowsky’s announcement, a social media content creator had declared candidacy for the seat: 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive critic of the far right who moved to Illinois last year and outraised Schakowsky in the first quarter.

Abughazaleh will almost certainly be joined by a field of Democratic hopefuls that could include Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, state Sen. Laura Fine, state Rep. Hoan Huynh and others.

Schakowsky declined to say Monday whether she’d support any particular candidate to succeed her.

Biss and Fine, who were at the luncheon, both declined to discuss whether they were interested in the seat.

“This is a day to talk about Jan’s remarkable legacy,” Biss said. “I just feel really fortunate to have a leader like her in this role, and I feel excited to think about that and thank her.”

Schakowsky’s retirement announcement came less than two weeks after U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, also 80, declared that he would not seek another term.

Speaking with reporters after the luncheon, Schakowsky said making the decision to retire was “not as tough as you might think.”

“It’s been a long time that I’ve been in the Congress,” she said.

Schakowsky wore a true red suit, as she had throughout her first campaign and when she first declared victory for the seat. The same bright color was reflected in many of the blazers, cardigans and blouses of her supporters at the more than 100 tables in the ballroom.

Schakowsky was a state representative when she first ran for Congress on her record as a lawmaker and activist, offering a “message of equal rights for women, minorities and gays, protection for union workers, and affordable national health care,” the Tribune wrote.

She was seen as more progressive than her two Democratic primary opponents, state Sen. Howard Carroll and Pritzker, who finished third. The primary was one of the most expensive in the nation at the time, as Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, spent nearly $1 million of his own money. In his two bids for governor, Pritzker has spent $350 million.

When she won in 1998, Schakowsky said voters’ desire to have a woman representative may have put her over the edge, as she was elected at a time when all of the state’s then 20 members in the House were men. 

“Now the men’s club delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives will have a woman’s voice,” she said then.

At the time of her first win, the 9th Congressional District ran along Lake Michigan from Diversey Avenue to Evanston’s northern border before shifting west to take in some of the city’s Northwest Side, as well as north suburban Skokie, Golf, Morton Grove, Lincolnwood and much of Niles. Today, the district is still heavily Democratic but stretches from the Far North Side of Chicago to include all or part of Buffalo Grove, Tower Lake and Hawthorn Woods as well as other parts of Cook and McHenry counties.

Even as her district’s borders changed, Schakowsky has not had a serious primary challenger since she was first elected to Congress and has easily defeated Republican opponents in the general election.

Over the years, she rose to become a member of the House Democratic leadership team under former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was an ardent voice of women’s rights and increasing the number of women elected to Congress. She twice backed Marie Newman in her challenges to incumbent conservative Democrat U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, with Newman defeating Lipinski in 2020. Schakowsky has also been a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump, skipping his joint address to Congress this year as she did in 2018.

Speaking on Monday, Schakowsky asked her supporters — who had name tags and signs declaring “I’M A JAN FAN!” — to continue to resist Trump’s policies and believe they could win.

She told reporters that she planned to continue her activism and support for candidates to elected office.

“You know, I can still be a badass,” she said onstage to raucous applause.

Throughout her time in Washington, Schakowsky was an advocate for stricter gun laws, health care reform and the consumer issues that helped buoy her to the national stage. She was an early critic of the Iraq war and a supporter of abortion rights.

Schakowsky, who is Jewish and has been a staunch supporter of Israel, more recently was criticized by some on the left who thought she should more forcefully advocate for Palestinians in the ongoing war in Gaza.

The daughter of Jewish immigrants, Schakowsky grew up in Chicago and was active in public interest groups before running for the state legislature. Her husband, Robert Creamer, was the founder of one of those groups, Illinois Public Action. Creamer, a political consultant, was sentenced to five months in prison in 2006 for using bad checks to prop up his struggling consumer group and for a tax charge.

At the luncheon, Schakowsky’s announcement came after speeches from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Pritzker.

“Jan taught me the first and most important lesson in politics: how to accept defeat when the best woman for the job wins,” Pritzker said. “Decades of service since, she continues to teach me.”

Last week, addressing the potential of a primary field shaping up to replace Durbin, Pritzker recalled the 1997 campaign and encouraged new leadership in the Senate race. 

“Remember, I ran for Congress when I was 31 years old, and there were an awful lot of people who said to me that it’s not your turn. I ran anyway. I think that in fact we need more young people, we need the new generation,” he said. 

Schakowsky herself once represented a generational change, as she took over her seat from someone who held it for nearly 50 years. As she announced she would become the first declared candidate for Yates’ post in April 1997, Schakowsky traced her career to one of her first and most famous political fights: getting freshness dates on groceries.

“A date on cottage cheese did not change the world, but it’s changed my life forever,” she said. “It convinced me that a few committed individuals could make their world better.”

The City Council’s Public Safety Committee had been expected to vote on the measure at its afternoon meeting, but Ald. Brian Hopkins said early in the day it would not go forward. Too many aldermen planned to attend U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s afternoon announcement, where she said she would not seek re-election, he said.

But Hopkins touted listening sessions that he attended with teens and another where Mayor Brandon Johnson listened to Streeterville residents as the downtown alderman promised to push the measure forward before late May.

The clock is ticking for supporters of the curfew measure to pass something, because they see it as important to give police added power to deal with the takeovers that tend to be more common during warmer summer months.

And while he defended the need for new curfew powers, Hopkins, 2nd, echoed Johnson in calling for more money to be spent on young people. He called for park fieldhouses to be opened later into the night and throughout weekends.

“What we need is not only programs for youth, but activities that are productive and that are an alternative to engaging in the kind of lawless teen takeovers that’s the problem,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins initially proposed a downtown 8 p.m. teen curfew — two hours earlier than Chicago’s 10 p.m. citywide teen curfew — last year and again in March after two large teen gatherings in his ward ended in shootings.

He is now proposing an ordinance that would grant Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling and Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Garien Gatewood the power to declare curfews together throughout the city as so-called “teen trend” gatherings pop up or are being planned.

He called off a vote last week in the committee, where the final tally was expected to be close. And he backed off a move to get the full council to consider his first version last month to instead push forward his updated curfew effort.

Johnson opposed the initial measure but has not taken a clear stance on the curfew power aldermen might soon give his administration. Asked about the expected vote Monday morning, he promised to “do what works” and said “we cannot succumb to elements or practices that just don’t prove to be effective.”

“There is no empirical evidence that lowering the curfew is going to reduce or eliminate those types of incidents,” Johnson said. “We want to prevent these types of occurrences from happening. And everything we do on the front end, we don’t have to scramble on the back end.”

Speaking alongside Hopkins on Monday in praise of the ongoing discussions with residents and young people alike, state Rep. La Shawn Ford dodged when asked if he supported Hopkins’ current proposal[cq comment=”the current ordinance” ].

“I support the idea of coming up with a solution… they still got to land the plane,” he said. “You cannot not do anything.”

Ford added that he would like to see young Chicagoans get free access to programs in the city’s parks. Cook County Commissioner Bill Lowry said government partners are willing to come in to offer everything from theater classes to dental service, but he added that young people get should get to help decide what opportunities they get.

“Our youth don’t want to be told what they should know. They want to be able to tell us what we need to know,” Lowry said. “But as we go forward with this initiative, we cannot have trends. The trends must end.”

Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and anti-violence organization GoodKids MadCity have criticized the proposed curfew power as an overly strong and potentially illegal crackdown. Johnson, too, has alluded to legal issues.

In a letter to aldermen, the City Council’s Office of Financial Analysis said Chicago “can anticipate potential litigation costs” because ACLU Illinois shared a letter signed by 20 additional civil liberties groups suggesting potential “intent to sue over proposed curfew.”

ACLU Illinois spokesperson Ed Yohnka expressed concern last week that police could use the temporary curfew power to crack down on protesters.

“Could this be abused in a way that could curtail that right? Absolutely,” he said. “And then even more broadly than that, young people have the right to be in every part of the city.”

Hopkins brushed those concerns aside Monday and called lawyers opposed to the measure “anti-police political activists.”

“There is absolutely zero concern about the constitutional validity of this ordinance by every one of the attorneys that was involved in it,” he said.

On Sunday, the president announced in a social media post that he would direct the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

But if Trump is to get his prison, the bureau will have to first pass a number of environmental reviews, including the National Environmental Protection Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA.

President Donald Trump says he’s going to reopen Alcatraz prison. Doing so would be difficult and costly

CEQA requires developers to measure how a proposed project might hurt the environment — from wildlife to impacting water resources — and show how it will mitigate those impacts. Often, groups looking to block a project will sue under CEQA, claiming that an agency’s environmental report hasn’t met the mark.

There are a few major environmental hurdles any prison on Alcatraz would have to clear.

First, the birds.

Several species of waterfowl nest on Alcatraz throughout the year. These include the Western gull, cormorants, and the pigeon guillemot, which are legally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Parts of the island are closed during seabird breeding season.

Contractors doing rehab work to the historic Alcatraz prison regularly have to pause construction or work around breeding season for these birds, historian John Martini said. Some parts of the island are closed much of the year to the public so the birds can roost. (Even the Escape from Alcatraz triathalon organizers are required to note in their permit that the swim won’t have a significant impact on birds.)

Alcatraz also has historic status. The island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and was designated a National Historic Landmark — an even more elusive status — in 1986. The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to minimize harm to National Historic Landmarks when taking on projects that would impact them. Historic resources are also recognized as part of the environment under CEQA.

If the project does receive its environmental clearance, it might not be until Trump is out of office.

Consider how long other Alcatraz projects have taken.

The National Park Service started planning for a new ferry landing on Alcatraz for visitors in 2015. It took nearly two years for NPS to get environmental clearance — in part because the city of Sausalito appealed the project under CEQA, holding the appeal over NPS as leverage to ensure the agency designed it such that new ferries wouldn’t increase traffic around downtown Sausalito. It took another few years to get approvals from the city and Port of San Francisco. The project is finally set to be complete this winter — a decade later.

Even if the project were to pass environmental clearances, a new prison on Alcatraz would be extraordinarily difficult to build, Martini said.

“It’s a rock,” he said of the island. “There’s no soil out there. There’s no source of fresh water. When they built the prison back in the 1910s, they had to bring out everything — huge amounts of water for mixing concrete, let alone what was needed to support the people living on the island.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that it would also pay for travel assistance — and that people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government they plan to return home will be “deprioritized” for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Secretary Kristi Noem said. “DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App.”

The department said it had already paid for a plane ticket for one migrant to return home to Honduras from Chicago and said more tickets have been booked for this week and next.

It’s a major part of Trump’s administration

Trump made immigration enforcement and the mass deportation of immigrants in the United States illegally a centerpiece of his campaign, and he is following through during the first months of his administration. But it is a costly, resource-intensive endeavor.

While the Republican administration is asking Congress for a massive increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department responsible for removing people from the country, it’s also pushing people in the country illegally to “self-deport.”

It has coupled this self-deportation push with television ads threatening action against people in the U.S. illegally and social media images showing immigration enforcement arrests and migrants being sent to a prison in El Salvador.

The Trump administration has often portrayed self-deportation as a way for migrants to preserve their ability to return to the United States someday, and the president himself suggested it on Monday while speaking to reporters at the White House. He said immigrants who “self-deport” and leave the U.S. might have a chance to return legally eventually “if they’re good people” and “love our country.”

“And if they aren’t, they won’t,” Trump said.

But Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigrants, said there’s a lot for migrants to be cautious about in the latest offer from Homeland Security.

He said it’s often worse for people to leave the country and not fight their case in immigration court, especially if they’re already in removal proceedings. He said if migrants are in removal proceedings and don’t show up in court they can automatically get a deportation order and leaving the country usually counts as abandoning many applications for relief including asylum applications.

It can be an intricate process

And Homeland Security is not indicating that it is closely coordinating with the immigration courts so that there are no repercussions for people in immigration court if they leave, he said.

“People’s immigration status is not as simple as this makes it out to be,” Reichlen-Melnick said.

He questioned where Homeland Security would get the money and the authorization to make the payments — and he suggested they are necessary because the administration can’t arrest and remove as many people as it has promised so it has to encourage people to do it on their own.

“They’re not getting their numbers,” he said.

As part of its self-deportation effort, the Trump administration has transformed an app that had been used by the Biden administration to allow nearly 1 million migrants to schedule appointments to enter the country into a tool to help migrants return home. Under the Biden administration, it was called CBP One; now it’s dubbed CBP Home.

Homeland Security said “thousands” of migrants have used the app to self-deport.

But Mark Krikorian, who heads the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration, said he doesn’t see the offer of paying people to go home as an admission that something in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda isn’t working.

Considering the millions of people who are in the country illegally, he said, it’s impossible to deport all of them so the administration has to combine its own enforcement efforts with encouraging people to go home voluntarily.

Krikorian said he supports the idea of paying migrants to leave although he questioned how it would work in reality.

“How do you make sure that they’ve actually gone home? Do you make them sign an agreement where they agree not to challenge their removal if they were to come back?” he questioned. “The execution matters, but the concept is sound.”

This has been tried before

Other countries have tried various iterations of paying migrants to return home.

There’s a reason it’s attractive to governments wanting to encourage migrants to go. It costs less to buy someone a plane ticket and some incentive money than it does to pay to find them, detain them if necessary, wait for the courts to rule on their case and then send them home.

The Department of Homeland Security said that it costs $17,121 to arrest, detain and remove someone in the U.S. illegally.

Voluntary returns also don’t require extensive government-to-government negotiations to get a country to take back its citizens, which can be a major benefit. There are a number of countries that either don’t take back their own citizens who are being returned by U.S. immigration enforcement officials or make that process challenging.

A 2011 study by the Migration Policy Institute and the European University Institute found that there were about 128 programs — often referred to as pay-to-go programs — around the world.

But the study found that, with a few exceptions such as one program to return people in the 1990s from Germany to Bosnia, these voluntary return programs generally failed at encouraging large numbers of people to go home.

It is not clear whether these programs resulted in migrants who took the payments actually staying in their home countries and not trying to emigrate again.

Michael McMurray, president of transportation and infrastructure at Wight & Co., will be the Aviation commissioner, according to a news release. He would need City Council approval to assume the post, which is currently helmed by acting head Tracey Payne.

McMurray’s ascension to the post caps off the search process to replace Jamie Rhee, who stepped down in February — days after the mayor delivered a warning about purging city officials who lacked loyalty to him.

It also fuels the ongoing speculation that John Roberson, the city’s chief operating officer, is in line to be the mayor’s pick to lead the Chicago Transit Authority rather than return to Department of Aviation, where he served as commissioner under Mayor Richard M. Daley and was also floated as Rhee’s replacement.

Amid the Roberson to CTA rumors, transit activist groups sought to flex their muscle in a letter last month calling “for transparency and a nationwide search,” without naming anyone. Johnson declined to answer when asked earlier in April if he had spoken to CTA board members about the potential appointment of Roberson and dodged questions about it by saying he and the city are “blessed to have” the longtime bureaucrat at City Hall.

Meanwhile, McMurray was a deputy commissioner at the Aviation Department under Daley before moving over to leadership roles in the city procurement and general services departments. Before that, his government experience included working as a senior counsel at the Chicago Housing Authority and as an assistant counsel at the U.S. Social Security Administration.

His private sector experience includes serving as president of the Globetrotters Engineering Corp. before heading to Wight & Co., the latter of which has a portfolio that includes design and construction projects for “local, county, and state roadway and bridges; highway interchanges, tollways and tollway facilities; commuter rail, freight rail, transit systems and stations,” per McMurray’s LinkedIn page.

Rhee, who was appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, oversaw O’Hare and Midway airports, key drivers of the city’s economy. More recently, she has helped lead an effort to overhaul large parts of O’Hare that has at times pitted Johnson against the Illinois congressional delegation.

Another major O’Hare construction project during Rhee’s tenure has yet to take off. Work to replace Terminal 2 with a new Global Terminal and add two satellite concourses is set to be the centerpiece of an overhaul of the airport’s terminals.

The shuffle started when Mayor Brandon Johnson elevated Carlos Ramírez-Rosa from the Chicago City Council to become CEO of the Chicago Park District. Johnson then tapped Cook County Commissioner Anthony Quezada to replace Ramírez-Rosa on the City Council last month. Vásquez will replace Quezada representing the 8th District on the county board.

Ramírez-Rosa’s former chief of staff at City Hall, Vásquez was a front-runner for the county post from the moment Ramírez-Rosa kicked off the musical chairs by taking the Chicago Park District job.

She beat out four other applicants during a Sunday meeting at Avondale-Logandale Elementary School of Democratic committeemen whose wards overlap with the 8th district.

As 35th Ward Democratic committeeman, Ramírez-Rosa led the selection process. Vásquez drummed up support from several progressive allies and local organizations heading into the process and was greeted by applause and cheers as she spoke at Sunday’s meeting.

After candidate interviews concluded, Quezada said he was “proud that this community, this movement, has nominated Jessica Vásquez,” and shot back at critics who complained progressives were “installing their own person.”

“They didn’t say that when they installed a state representative or the former state senator. They didn’t say it then. They had every opportunity to organize a community-led process this time around,” Quezada said.

She beat out Logan Laurie, who founded a nonprofit to fix up urban skateparks and now works as a staff assistant to U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; Ray Doeksen, a designer and retired Army captain; Joanne Fehn, a bureau chief in the Illinois attorney general’s office; and Enrique Morales, a policy researcher and founder of an arts nonprofit.

Morales was the only other candidate to receive final votes, from 1st Ward committeeman Laura Yepes, 31st Ward committeeman Félix Cardona, and a proxy for 36th Ward committeeman Gilbert Villegas.

Vásquez is the first woman to represent the 8th District on the county board, according to a release announcing her appointment, and also tilts the 17-member board to be majority women for the first time.

“I’m deeply humbled and grateful to the Committeepeople and community members who placed their trust in me,” Vásquez said in the release.

Vásquez was born and raised in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood and lives in Logan Square. She studied political science and social sciences at DePaul University and the University of Chicago, worked for three years as an external relations associate for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and began working for Ramírez-Rosa in 2017. Her most recent position was running the City Council’s Zoning Committee. She intends to run for the county seat in the 2026 election, according to a release.

In her application to the appointment committee, Vásquez said her focus would include “advocating for property tax reform to prevent working families from being displaced, protecting and fully funding our Cook County Health hospitals and clinics, and practicing collaborative governance by working hand-in-hand with elected officials and community organizations to ensure that policies are rooted in the needs and priorities of the people we serve.”