Illinois landlords ordered to pay former tenants $80K after threatening to call ICE
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'Sanctuary city' mayors defend immigration policies
"Migrants did not bring a wave of crime to Denver." Mayors of several large cities defended their policies in front of the House Oversight Committee.
CHICAGO – An Illinois judge ordered a pair of landlords to pay $80,000 to former tenants after threatening to report them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after a dispute in 2020.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Catherine A. Schneider ordered Marco Antonio Contreras and Denise Contreras to pay the sum to former tenants, Maria Maltos Escutia and Gabriel Valdez Garcia, according to court filings. The pair of tenants filed the lawsuit in 2022 against the Contrerases under the Illinois Immigrant Tenant Protection Act, a law Governor J.B. Pritzker signed in 2019 that prohibits landlords from evicting or retaliating against their tenants based on their immigration status.
"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," the tenant couple said in a statement this week announcing the judgment from February. "No one should feel or act superior to others. We are all equals and deserve respect. Just because someone is your landlord does not mean that they get to do whatever they want to you.'
Marco Antonio Contreras had threatened to call immigration agents on the family over a rent dispute in June 2020, according to the lawsuit. The dispute with the landlords originated when Maltos Escutia and Valdez Garcia were in the process of moving out and it was unclear if they would remain in the apartment for the entire month.
When reached by USA TODAY, attorneys for the Contreras family declined to comment citing further matters pending before the judge in the case.
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Maltos Escutia and Valdez Garcia moved into the basement apartment of the South Side bungalow in 2017 after verbally agreeing to pay the Contrerases $600, according to court filings.
The basement consisted of a bedroom, bathroom with shower, living room, and kitchen. The rent payment was due at the end of the prior month, according to court documents.
A disagreement arose between the landlords and renters when the Contrerases told them they would have to vacate the apartment because they were selling the house but asked for a full month's rent. It was unclear to the tenants that they would stay the full final month so they asked to pay a prorated amount upon leaving. Marco Antonio Contreras responded by threatening to call immigration authorities, the lawsuit said.
After vacating the apartment, Denise Contreras would not let them back to retrieve some possessions from the attic, including a stroller, bassinet, baby clothes, and baby swing, according to court filings. It's unclear in the lawsuit if Maltos Escutia or Valdez Garcia paid rent for their last month in the apartment.
An attorney for the family said the $80,000 figure was based in part on an assessment of damages and in part as a penalty.
'Hope it stands as a deterrent to other landlords'
The judgment out of Illinois comes amid a federal crackdown on cities seen as safe havens for immigrants. Recently, President Donald Trump has sent some immigrants to Guantanamo Bay and reaffirmed his promise to carry out mass deportations across the nation in an address to Congress Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance went to the U.S.-Mexico border to amplify Trump's message.
Only three states — Illinois, California, and Colorado — have explicit protections for immigrant renters, according to attorneys familiar with the case. When Pritzker signed the law in 2019, he expressed Illinois' willingness to "protect our immigrant tenants and give them a little more relief in these tumultuous times."
The case out of Cook County is the first to be decided under Illinois law, according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Attorneys at the national civil rights organization's Chicago office represented the tenants in the case. They said they were involved in another similar ongoing case in Illinois.
"It's an important outcome because it's the first verdict we're aware of under this law and we hope it stands as a deterrent to other landlords that might engage in similar conduct," Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the civil rights organization told USA TODAY. "We want folks to understand that regardless of what they hear from the White House or this current administration - which is quite derogatory towards immigrants - there are still laws in the states and federal statutes that protect immigrants or those who are presumed to be immigrants from discrimination."
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'Just asking to be treated like everyone else'
Heightened anti-immigrant rhetoric creates the conditions that make immigrant legal protections necessary, said Samir Hanna, a former Harvard Law School instructor with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, a Chicago-based civil rights policy group that has long supported the immigrant tenant protection law.
"If they don't have these types of protections then it just leads to more opportunities for landlord abuse, particularly as our current climate creates incentives for abuse," he told USA TODAY.
Hanna said he sometimes represented tenants in similar situations when he was an attorney in Massachusetts. Without explicit protections it could be tricky to get them to even come forward against an unscrupulous landlord, he said.
"Immigrants aren't asking for any special treatment, they're just asking to be treated like everyone else," Hanna said. "There's so many times tenants are afraid to enforce their rights in the first place and undocumented tenants all the more."
Michael Loria is a national reporter on the USA TODAY breaking news desk. Contact him at mloria@usatoday.com, @mchael_mchael or on Signal at (202) 290-4585.
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