A Cook County Sheriff’s deputy was caught on video casually greeting and physically interacting with a masked ICE agent immediately after federal agents conducted a civil immigration arrest outside the Bridgeview Courthouse in Cook County, Illinois.
The video shows Deputy Gigliotti, badge number 19013, exchanging a “dap” with a heavily armed man in a black balaclava and tactical vest. The interaction happened in plain view, just moments after ICE agents removed a man from the courthouse area
When confronted by bystanders, the deputy offered little explanation and appeared defensive as people demanded his badge number and questioned why he was showing camaraderie with federal agents conducting an arrest at a courthouse.
The video shows Deputy Gigliotti, badge number 19013, exchanging a “dap” with a heavily armed man in a black balaclava and tactical vest. The interaction happened in plain view, just moments after ICE agents removed a man from the courthouse area.
This isn’t a minor operational slip-up. It is a stark, flat display of local law enforcement choosing institutional loyalty over the law.
Cook County has no 287(g) agreement with ICE. It is a sanctuary jurisdiction with explicit court access protections specifically designed to keep federal immigration enforcement out of local judicial spaces. When a sheriff’s deputy treats ICE agents like teammates anyway, he effectively nullifies those protections on the pavement.
The Poison of Informal Cooperation
The 287(g) program is routinely sold as a public safety asset. In reality, it systematically destroys the basic civic contract.
Whether through formal federal contracts or informal gestures like a courthouse “dap up,” local ICE collusion yields entirely predictable results:
Silence: Immigrants stop calling 911 when they witness crimes.
Danger: Victims of domestic violence think twice before entering a building to seek a protective order.
Chaos: Whole neighborhoods go dark, leaving actual criminal elements unchecked because community trust has been treated as disposable.
In a sanctuary county, this casual, rogue cooperation is exceptionally corrosive. It signals to the public that official sanctuary policies can be completely ignored on the ground whenever an individual officer decides his personal loyalty lies elsewhere.
Neutral Ground vs. Hunting Ground
Courthouses are legally mandated to be neutral spaces where people can settle civil disputes, defend themselves, and seek justice without fear of being snatched by federal operatives.
When ICE uses these hallways as hunting grounds and local deputies facilitate the trap, the illusion of a neutral judiciary collapses. The courthouse simply becomes another cog in the deportation machine—fully subsidized by your local tax dollars, and sealed with a handshake.
ICE Agents Are Harassing the Courthouse Volunteers Who Assist Besieged Immigrants – Mother Jones
Deputy Gigliotti’s actions, and the lack of any real accountability shown in the video, send a clear message.
Even in places that claim to limit ICE cooperation, some officers will still choose the federal deportation apparatus over the people they are sworn to protect.
This is not public safety.
This is the slow poisoning of community trust, one handshake and one courthouse arrest at a time.
