Chicago Mayor Tells Residents They Must Make ‘Sacrifices’ for Newly Arrived Illegal Immigrants; Johnson Warns Cost of Migrant Crisis Could Exceed $300M in Briefings to City Council Members on Plan to House Migrants in Tents

Chicago Mayor Tells Residents They Must Make ‘Sacrifices’ for Newly Arrived Illegal Immigrants:

Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago called on city residents to make “sacrifices” to address the thousands of migrants in the city who need shelter.

Johnson announced plans to move 1,600 migrants currently being sheltered in police stations to tent cities, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Residents protested and took legal action to prevent Chicago from housing migrants in a closed-down high school and two other locations on the South Side of the city in May, WLS-TV reported.

“There is a sacrifice that is going to be required in this moment … The sacrifices that we are prepared to make in order to ensure that this city is not chaotic and it is not riddled with desperate people,” the mayor told the Sun-Times.

As Chicago residents continue to be upset over the border crisis directly impacting them, Mayor Brandon Johnson said even more “sacrifices” will have to be made to live up to being a sanctuary city. pic.twitter.com/WZJqqUGwCm

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 8, 2023

Johnson also took issue with Democratic Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, who said Thursday the flood of migrants could “destroy” the city. —>READ MORE HERE

Johnson Warns Cost of Migrant Crisis Could Exceed $300M in Briefings to City Council Members on Plan to House Migrants in Tents:

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday briefed members of the Chicago City Council on his plans to move the nearly 2,000 migrants from police stations across the city into large tents, and said it will likely cost more than $300 million to care for the men, women and children sent to Chicago from the southern border through the end of the year.

Since the first bus of migrants arrived in Chicago on a bus sent by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a year ago, more than 13,500 people have made their way to Chicago, straining the city’s social safety net and at times exacerbating tension between Chicago’s Black and Latino communities.

Between Aug. 31, 2022, when the first bus arrived, and the end of July, the city spent $132 million caring for the migrants, and expects to spend an additional $123 million between August and the end of the year, for a total of $255.7 million, according to projections shared with alderpeople Friday.

In the briefings that began Friday and are set to continue Monday, Johnson and his top aides did not identify where they planned to build the massive tents, which could shelter, feed and care for as many as 1,000 migrants in a single location, or precisely how much it would cost Chicago taxpayers, sources told WTTW News.

Instead, Johnson asked the City Council members to each identify two to three locations in their wards big enough to erect temporary structures — much like the ones used by sports teams as practice facilities during the cold weather months — large enough to house at least 200 people, sources said. —>READ MORE HERE

Source