Brandon Johnson
Who is Brandon Johnson?
What was Brandon Johnson’s role before becoming mayor?
What significant conflict did Brandon Johnson face as mayor?
What was the outcome of Brandon Johnson’s mayoral campaign?
What actions did Brandon Johnson take regarding immigration issues?
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Brandon Johnson (born March 27, 1976, Elgin, Illinois, U.S.) is a former American educator, a Democratic politician, and the 57th mayor of Chicago, a position he has held since 2023. He previously served as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and held a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners from 2018 to 2023. Johnson gained national attention as mayor amid a 2025 conflict with U.S. Pres. Donald Trump (2017–21; 2025– ), who called for Johnson, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, to be jailed for “failing to protect” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers deployed in Chicago as part of Trump’s countrywide campaign to deport immigrants without legal status.
The sixth of 10 siblings, Johnson was raised by his parents, Andrew and Wilma Johnson, in Elgin, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. Brandon Johnson has credited his father’s career as a pastor with his comfort in public speaking and his ability to energize crowds of people. Although Johnson was expected to one day inherit his father’s congregation, he focused his studies on youth development and education, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Aurora University in northeastern Illinois. He then briefly worked in politics, serving in the offices of Illinois state Rep. Deborah L. Graham and Illinois state Sen. Don Harmon before starting a career in education in 2007.
Johnson first taught at the underfunded Jenner Elementary Academy of the Arts in Cabrini-Green, a public-housing neighborhood in Chicago, where he observed promising students struggling because of poverty and violence in their community. Inspired to enter community activism, Johnson became an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. There he led coalitions to block the privatization of neighborhood schools, to reduce standardized testing, and to increase access to state funding. Johnson married Stacie Rencher (later Rencher-Johnson) when both were 22 years old. The couple live in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago with their three children.
In 2018 Johnson won a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners, a legislative body of 17 representatives of various cities in the county. Johnson represented Chicago’s West Side and nearby suburbs. During his time on the board, Johnson acted as a lead sponsor for the Just Housing Amendment, an addition to the county’s Human Rights Ordinance that prohibits housing discrimination against people with criminal histories. He also supported efforts to eliminate the Chicago Police Department’s gang database, which disproportionately targeted people of color, to secure legal representation for immigrants and refugees facing deportation, and to support low-income residents of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020 Johnson organized the Budget for Black Lives, which sought investment in housing, transportation, and health care in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
In 2022 Johnson launched his mayoral campaign in a challenge to incumbent Democrat Lori Lightfoot. Running as a progressive against Lightfoot and seven other challengers, Johnson received key endorsements from the Chicago Teachers Union as well as from U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Key tenets of his campaign included taxing the rich, reducing homelessness, and implementing a “treatment not trauma” program in which social workers instead of police would respond to 911 calls relating to mental health. Johnson and one other candidate, Paul Vallas, won the most votes in an all-Democratic race in February 2023, moving to the runoff and making Lightfoot the first Chicago mayor to lose a bid for reelection in 40 years. In April Johnson was elected the city’s next mayor over Vallas; he was inaugurated the following month.
Johnson took office in a time that found him quickly moving from “crisis to crisis,” according to Chicago’s public television station. In May 2023 migrants fleeing violence and social collapse in Venezuela began arriving in Chicago, seeking refuge in police stations and local communities. Some arrived on buses commandeered by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who sent asylum-seekers to Chicago and other sanctuary cities in the country in hopes of fracturing the Democratic Party on immigration issues ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Soon after the start of his second administration, Trump sued officials of Chicago, Cook county, and Illinois in order to block sanctuary city laws, which limited local enforcement of federal immigration laws to protect immigrants without legal status. Johnson also faced an early budget gap that threatened his promises to invest in Chicago public schools and his “treatment not trauma” plan. However, he achieved some political victories by presiding over a much-praised 2024 Democratic National Convention and successfully ending Chicago’s lower minimum wage for workers receiving tips.
In September 2025 Trump deployed federal immigration officers to Chicago as part of what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security termed “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ICE-led mission to arrest immigrants without legal status in Illinois. Johnson and Pritzker vocally resisted Trump’s efforts, and on October 16 the Cook County Board of Commissioners issued an executive order prohibiting ICE agents from using “County owned property, resources, and personnel for civil immigration enforcement activities.” Johnson called ICE’s deployment “a continuation of the Trump administration’s war on the poor,” saying during a press conference:
It is not “tough” or “patriotic” to throw a crying mother to the floor who just wanted to be reunited with her children. It’s not “law and order” to body slam a 79-year-old business owner, an American citizen, for trying to produce the papers of his employees.
In response to resistance from Chicago and Illinois leaders, Trump wrote on his social media app Truth Social that both Johnson and Pritzker “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!”