>> President Donald Trump is escalating his push to punish the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois for working to protect undocumented immigrants.

His administration today is asking a federal judge to overturn the city's welcoming city ordinance and the state's trust act.

The lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice makes it clear the president will directly target Chicago as it seeks to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history.

Our Heather Sharon joins us.

now with more.

Heather, this seems like a big battle now.

The lawsuit argues the city in this state sentry laws are unconstitutional.

My well, the lawsuit argues that the laws make it impossible for federal agents to enforce federal law.

And of course, under the Constitution.

>> Federal Trump state law and city law.

And that's why they're saying it should be overturned.

Now the city says that is, in fact, not the case that there is nothing in the city.

Lot of the state law that would prevent federal immigration agents from apprehending and deporting people here without authorization.

They simply say it's not the state or the city's role to help Now remind us what the city and state laws actually do and why Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson are defending Well, as we've talked about, they've been on the books since the Mid 1980's here in Chicago.

And it's designed to make sure that Chicagoans, regardless of their citizenship status or their immigration status can access services that they need like police protection, health care, shelter and all sorts of other services.

The city provides to all Rest Inc. Now the governor and the mayor say that that will make Chicago safer place.

That puts them at loggerheads with President Trump who says that all undocumented immigrants are criminals because they came here without authorization or overstayed their permission.

The governor and the mayor, of course, reject that characterization and how did the mayor and the governor react to the lawsuit?

So both said that they looked forward to defending the laws in court.

Governor JB Pritzker was a bit more direct than the mayor.

He said he looked forward to the state's day in court.

While the mayor said he would continue to defend Chicago's longstanding values and protect working people.

He's been very outspoken about that.

Why did the Trump administration Chicago instead of another century city like Denver?

Well, Chicago has long been in President Trump's crosshairs.

He see Chicago as the epicenter of all urban ills and has repeatedly attacked the city's leaders and incompetent.

I also think it has something to do with what we saw a few weeks ago.

Of course, we saw all of that reporting saying that the mass deportation would start here in Chicago.

That didn't happen because of leaks.

And then when ICE agents arrived in the city, they found as the border stars said a very educated population prepared to respond to protect as many people in Chicago as possible.

That clearly has thrown a wrench in Trump administration's efforts.

What happens next?

Well, litigation, as we all know, is a lengthy process, especially when you have 3 layers of government for including Cook County.

So this is going to take a long time to play out back in 2017, the city sued the Trump administration over a similar effort to strip the federal funding from sanctuary cities that wasn't resolved until 2020 when it went all the way up to the Supreme Court where the city won a total victory.

But thank you, Heather, for this report.

We'll have to see what happens next.

Thanks, John.

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