On the campaign trail last November, President Trump promised to deport all unauthorized immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the United States. In the last three months, the Trump administration has tried to put in a wide range of measures to restrict immigration to the US - whether it’s stopping refugees from coming here, or slowing down the process for H1-B visas, or making it easier for federal authorities to deport people.

We wanted to ask what it’s been like to immigrate to Illinois in this political climate. We were joined from Urbana by Nadege Kosshi, who immigrated here in December 2016 from the Congo, with translation help by Ha Ho from the East Central Illinois Refugee Mutual Assistance Center. Then, we talked with Syrian Community Network founder and executive director Suzanne Sahloul, and University YMCA and New American Welcome Center board chair Ricardo Diaz.

In 1957, 7-year old Maria Ridolph was kidnapped and murdered. Her family has been trying to figure out what happened ever since.

In 2012, it seemed like state authorities had finally figured it out. Jack McCullough was eventually tried and convicted for Maria’s murder in a DeKalb County court. But 4 years into a life sentence, his conviction was overturned - and McCullough was released from prison last year. Now, the 77-year old man has been granted an official “certificate of innocence” by DeKalb County. WNIJ reporter Sue Stephens joined us from DeKalb to tell us more about this story.

The 19th annual Roger Ebert Film Festival kicks off tomorrow in Champaign. The festival is centered around the themes of kindness, compassion and empathy. We heard a bit about the films that will be featured this week during Niala’s interview with festival co-founder Chaz Ebert on yesterday’s show.

We thought we’d give you a preview of several of the panel discussions that will be included as part of EbertFest. The panels are free and open to the public. To help us learn more about all of this, we were joined by Nate Kohn, director of EbertFest, Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips, and computer science professor and National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois acting director Bill Gropp.