Cook County Sheriff's Office

Cook County operates the largest single-site jail in the United States, housing around 5,500 people on any given day. Every person arrested by the Chicago Police Department and held in custody passes through this facility.

Since 2015, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has contracted with a company called Appriss to run VINE — a victim notification service that alerts registered users when someone is released from jail. That contract contains a clause, known as the ‘Risk Solutions’ clause, that allows Appriss to share real-time jail booking data with LexisNexis Risk Solutions. LexisNexis packages that data into its Accurint investigative database and sells access to federal agencies. ICE held a $22.1 million contract with LexisNexis from 2021 through early 2026 that included access to Accurint. A public records request filed by Just Futures Law found that ICE’s Chicago field office ran over 13,000 LexisNexis searches in just six months in 2021, producing more than 1,800 civil immigration enforcement reports.

This matters because Cook County is a sanctuary jurisdiction — it operates under both the Illinois TRUST Act and its own ICE detainer ordinance, which are supposed to limit cooperation with immigration enforcement. The Appriss-LexisNexis pipeline bypasses those protections entirely. The data doesn’t travel from Cook County to ICE directly; it travels through two private companies first, which means the county’s sanctuary policies don’t apply.

In July 2022, the Cook County Board held the first public hearing of its kind in the country to address this issue. Despite testimony from immigrant rights advocates and legal experts, the board voted to renew the Appriss contract. It was renewed again in October 2024. Appriss provided a written assurance that Cook County data would not be shared with ICE through LexisNexis — but advocates note there is no legal mechanism to enforce that assurance. For comparison, New York City negotiated its Appriss contract without the Risk Solutions clause, proving it can be removed without losing the victim notification service.