CHICAGO — Fresh off winning the Democratic primary for Attorney General, Illinois State Sen. Kwame Raoul joined WGN Morning News on set Thursday.
Raoul remarked that Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s shoes are going to be “very big to fill.” He went on to speak on how he’ll build off of Madigan’s work.
“I think continue and build upon it. I think there are areas particularly in intervention in neighborhoods of normalized violence where we can use victims resources to intervene,” Raoul said. “Where kids in particular have been exposed to violence that is continuous and normal. The mental health effect of that is not treated, so need to expand our vision of who we consider a victim.”
In addition, Raoul also addressed President Donald Trump’s administration’s justifcation for including a citizenship question, stating that “there is no punishment for anyone who simply refuses to answer it.”
“Trump has been very clear on his anti-immigrant animus,” Raoul said. “He’s spoken about negatively about Haiti and other countries, and has indicated preference for immigrants from Norway over immigrants from countries of color. So there’s a racism there and there’s just an anti-immigrant animus. So when you couple that with the citizenship question, there’s clear implication that there’s an effort to punish states that have embraced immigrants, we are one of them, we passed the Trust Act, as well as sanctuary cities.”
In November, Raoul will face-off with Republican Attorney General nominee Erika Harold. In his approach, he said he will focus on protecting Illinois from the federal government and Trump’s efforts to roll back any policies.