Chicago's new left-wing, pro-illegal immigration, criminal-apologist mayor recently chided his fellow Democrats in New York City for their increasingly dire rhetoric about illegal immigrants arriving in their jurisdiction. Gov. Kathy Hochul used to talk about how these 'migrants' would be embraced by the warm, open arms of New York. Now she's telling them to go elsewhere. Mayor Eric Adams thumped his chest about the Big Apple being a sanctuary city during the Trump years. Now he's warning that it's overrun by migrants who are 'destroying' the city, and he's offering them one-way plane tickets out of town. Brandon Johnson has been watching this evolution with disgust, telling a news outlet an earlier this year that Chicago won't engage in that sort of demagoguery, and won't be "overwhelmed" by the crisis.
Of course, New York's numbers amount to a mere fraction of one month's worth of the national crisis-level influx, and Chicago's inbound migrants are a fraction of New York's, so Johnson has been talking a big game with very little skin in it. There have nevertheless been a number of outbursts and confrontations in the Windy City involving the re-settlement of more migrants, coming from voters who are certainly not right-wingers. Many residents don't want the illegal immigrants placed into their neighborhoods, and have made that preference abundantly clear. The city has run out of room on the floors of police precincts and O'Hare Airport, so proposals for sprawling tent cities are now being debated. The Johnson administration is pressing forward. At a city council committee meeting this week, things got heated:
Chicago’s Mayor pledged his city would welcome many more illegal immigrants. Chicago’s residents aren’t having it. “Shouts, tears, boos from crowd force recess of City Council committee meeting during heated migrant debate:” https://t.co/5XRRyApuzF
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 7, 2023
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s allies tried Tuesday to approve their own, softer version of a non-binding referendum on Chicago’s burgeoning migrant crisis but failed after being shouted down by an angry crowd ordered forcibly removed from City Council chambers. “Sergeant-at-arms, clear the room,” Rules Committee Chairwoman Michelle Harris (8th) shouted after Chicagoans opposed to housing the new arrivals shouted down Council members on both sides of the issue. Several people in the gallery, including a woman in tears, were escorted out by security after another observer singled them out as supporters of welcoming migrants. “These are the people who are against us,” a man shouted, pointing at those being escorted out and waving other angry crowd members over. Loud boos followed and persisted until the sergeant-at-arms restored some semblance of order about 10 minutes later. Amid the chaos, the Rules Committee was recessed until Nov. 16. That’s the day after the Council is scheduled to take a final vote on Johnson’s $16.6 billion budget. “Do you want a race war?” one woman shouted at the height of the vitriol.
This was, needless to say, not a room packed with Republicans or conservatives. Fascinating:
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) has been trying for weeks to put an advisory referendum on the March ballot asking voters if Chicago should remain a sanctuary city. Frantic efforts to prevent that from happening at a special City Council meeting last week ultimately resulted in the bullying and manhandling allegations against Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) that forced Ramirez-Rosa to resign as the mayor’s floor leader and Zoning Committee chairman. Tuesday’s Rules Committee meeting was called to substitute Beale’s simple sanctuary city question for a softer, more innocuous version. The mayor’s version would say: “Should the city of Chicago impose reasonable limits on the city’s providing resources for migrant sheltering, such as funding caps and shelter occupancy time limits, if necessary to prevent a substantial negative impact on Chicago’s current residents?” Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) said that lengthy and toothless question is fundamentally flawed.“Should we limit what we spend? ... What happens when you reach the limit? What are you going to do when you say, ‘We’ve spent all the money we’re willing to spend’ and you still have buses arriving here?” Lopez said, raising his voice to be heard above the shouting from the gallery before it was cleared.
“This question does not answer the issue as to why people continue to be shipped to the city of Chicago. And they are shipped here because we remain unabashed in saying a welcoming city, a sanctuary city. Even though Republicans and Democrats are now taking full advantage of that.” As the shouting continued, Lopez said, “We need to vote this down. We need a clean referendum that simply puts the question to all of Chicago: ‘Shall we remain a sanctuary city?’ Because what we know, and what so many in this room fear, is that the true coalition between the African American and Latino communities does exist around this question because both communities want an end to it.” Beale noted Chicago spends “up to $40 million a month” on a migrant crisis that has prompted Johnson to race to open winterized base camps in impoverished Black and Hispanic neighborhoods that don’t want those tent camps before temperatures plummet to get migrants off police stations floors. The intense public anger now on display at every Council and committee meeting is because of efforts to “shut people out from having a voice,” Beale said.
Some Chicago Aldermen want to put the city's status as a "sanctuary" jurisdiction up for a popular referendum vote next year, but the mayor and his allies want to avoid that -- probably because they fear they'd lose. Johnson's big 'solution' is to beg the feds for more taxpayer money to house migrants, not to shut down the actual problem at the border, or to change the city's pro-illegal-immigration posture:
All of this anger and chaos and backlash over 20,000 migrants in Chicago, which is a little more than two days' worth of arrivals at the Southern border, based on the September numbers. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott needs to ramp up the pressure with even more buses to Chicago, whose leader says they will welcome the migrants, causing a rupture in the city's Democrat-dominated politics. It's the only way to force any accountability. It's totally unfair to expect border communities to disproportionately shoulder this crisis, especially with other places openly patting themselves on the back for being "sanctuaries." Force them to experience what living those values really looks like. They're already ripping themselves apart over a relative drop in the bucket. I'll leave you with another interesting story out of Chicago. The leader of the city's virulently radical teachers union was recently exposed as a flaming, race-baiting hypocrite on school choice. It appears as though she has additional problems on her plate now:
Gates famously has one son in a private high school and two kids in Chicago public schools.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 8, 2023
If she's not committing tax fraud with the Indiana homestead deduction then she's committing residency fraud with the two kids in Illinois public. https://t.co/3LlrPuO2H3
She and Adam Schiff should have a drink and talk things over. We'll keep an eye out for her inevitable statement of faux victimhood, if it hasn't dropped already.