Le Journal

As former Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover awaits a hearing this spring over his request for Gov. JB Pritzker to commute his life sentence for murder, influential Chicagoans disagree about whether he should go free.Late last year, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke sent a letter to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board objecting to Hoover’s first request for executive clemency.In her Dec. 29 letter, Burke said Chicago’s neighborhoods continue to suffer from extreme violence tied to the Gangster Disciples, the massive street gang that Hoover famously ran from prison.“Both things can be and are true — that Chicago was ravaged by misguided public policies and disinvestment, and [Hoover] took advantage of the system’s failures and further ravaged Chicago’s neighborhoods due to his creation of the Gangster Disciples and the fostering of violence within the gang,” Burke wrote.The board is scheduled to hold a hearing on Hoover’s request in April. The board gives a recommendation to Pritzker, who makes the ultimate decision on clemency requests. The board typically takes about two months to forward a recommendation to the governor. A January hearing for Hoover was canceled.One of 75-year-old Hoover’s high-profile supporters is Arne Duncan, former President Barack Obama’s secretary of education. Duncan now runs Chicago CRED, an anti-violence organization.In 2023, Duncan sent the Prisoner Review Board a letter supporting Hoover’s separate request for parole, which was denied. The board can grant or deny parole without the governor’s formal input. Arne Duncan, founder of Chicago CRED, speaks at a meeting of violence-prevention groups at the Garfield Park fieldhouse in May 2022.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times In his letter, Duncan told the board he met Hoover’s wife and son and they long to be reunited.“They have also expressed to me that Larry Hoover would like to see the same thing I hope to see, a safer Chicago. If Larry Hoover is released from his prison sentence, he is more than welcome to help us at Chicago CRED to work to accomplish our mission in reducing gun violence in Chicago,” Duncan wrote.A spokesperson for Chicago CRED said Duncan now supports Hoover’s pending clemency petition. Other supporters include Chance the Rapper, Jesse Jackson Sr. and the Rev. Al Sharpton, according to his petition.In her letter to the parole board, Burke outlined the reasons she thinks Hoover doesn’t deserve clemency.She stressed that she doesn’t think Hoover accepts full responsibility for the 1973 killing of William “Pooky” Young.Hoover continues to refer to fellow gang member Andrew Howard as the “principal actor” in the shooting, but Hoover was the leader of their gang faction, Burke said. She said Hoover ordered the slaying because he thought Young, 19, was stealing from the gang’s Englewood drug stash houses.Hoover and Howard were both sentenced to 150-200 years in state prison for Young’s killing. They also were suspected in the fatal shooting of a man who cooperated with Chicago police in the investigation of Young’s murder.Howard was paroled in 1992, which Hoover’s lawyers say demonstrates the unfairness of the Illinois criminal justice system. Eileen O’Neill Burke after being sworn in as the Cook County State’s Attorney in December 2024.Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times Related No more parole recommendations, Foxx says, after heat for not opposing cop-killers’ bids for release Burke's objection to clemency for Hoover is a shift in how the Cook County state's attorney's office deals with prisoners' requests for freedom.In 2021, her predecessor, Kim Foxx, decided she would no longer offer opinions on parole to the Prisoner Review Board after she was criticized for not opposing the bids for release of two men convicted of killing Chicago police officers.Burke doesn't weigh in on every parole or clemency case her office is notified about. But she does file objections in some cases, such as a clemency petition for a convicted cop killer…

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.The shift comes as the Trump administration dramatically expands immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of officers under a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping enforcement tactics in cities such as Minneapolis.For years, immigrant advocates, legal aid groups and local governments have urged people not to open their doors to immigration agents unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge. That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval. The ICE directive directly undercuts that advice at a time when arrests are accelerating under the administration’s immigration crackdown.The memo itself has not been widely shared within the agency, according to a whistleblower complaint, but its contents have been used to train new ICE officers who are being deployed into cities and towns to implement the president’s immigration crackdown. New ICE hires and those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo, according to the whistleblower disclosure.It is unclear how broadly the directive has been applied in immigration enforcement operations. The Associated Press witnessed ICE officers ramming through the front door of the home of a Liberian man in Minneapolis on Jan. 11 with only an administrative warrant, wearing heavy tactical gear and with their rifles drawn.The change is almost certain to meet legal challenges and stiff criticism from advocacy groups and immigrant-friendly state and local governments that have spent years successfully urging people not to open their doors unless ICE shows them a warrant signed by a judge.The Associated Press obtained the memo and whistleblower complaint from an official in Congress, who shared it on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents. The AP verified the authenticity of the accounts in the complaint.The memo, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, and dated May 12, 2025, says: “Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose."The memo does not detail how that determination was made nor what its legal repercussions might be.When asked about the memo, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement to the AP that everyone the department serves with an administrative warrant has already had “full due process and a final order of removal.”She said the officers issuing those warrants have also found probable cause for the person’s arrest. She said the Supreme Court and Congress have “recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement,” without elaborating. McLaughlin did not respond to questions about whether ICE officers entered a person’s home since the memo was issued relying solely on an administrative warrant and if so, how often.Recent arrests shine a light on tacticsWhistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal…