Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to claim that his city remains a “welcoming city” for illegal immigrants, and yet he and his lackeys in the city council recently passed stringent new rules on bus companies and have even levied stiff fines for breaking these never-before-seen rules, all in a desperate attempt to scare bus companies away from dropping off illegal aliens in the purported sanctuary city.
Mayor Brandon Johnson listens during a City Council meeting Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at City Hall in Chicago (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images).
The self-professed “progressive” mayor and his allies on the council quietly passed a series of restrictions on bus companies in November, and now, Johnson has launched an incredible flurry of fines and 55 lawsuits on the bus companies he has deemed “rogue companies” for violating these new rules, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The fines and lawsuits have been leveraged against 77 bus companies, most of which have taken contracts from Texas to transport illegal immigrants from border towns to the Windy City and other points north.
Mayor’s office spokesman Cassio Mendoza claimed that the new rules are meant to assure the “safety” of migrants and added that Chicago “continues to welcome asylum-seekers but the city cannot safely and efficiently shelter migrants when bus companies, contracted by the State of Texas, flagrantly violate all safety measures that the city has put in place.”
The new rules restrict when, where, and how often buses may drop off illegal aliens in Chicago. The rules state that buses may only drop off passengers between 8:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and no more than two buses may drop off passengers per hour.
But even more restrictive, another rule states that bus companies now have to file for permission to enter the city, permission that can be denied at the whim of city hall.
The city also maintains it should be allowed to impound buses caught dropping off passengers outside the boundaries of the new rules. On top of taking a bus company’s property, city hall also wants to impose fines that start at $3,000 per bus and go up from there.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently admitted that he has sent more than 16,000 illegal immigrants to Chicago since he began his state-sponsored busing program as the Biden border crisis gets worse by the day.
Migrants outside of Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, US, on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. President Joe Biden was confronted at the airport in El Paso on Sunday by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who demanded in a hand-delivered letter that Biden act immediately to stop unauthorized immigration including by building more walls on the border (Paul Ratje/Bloomberg).
But Abbott’s program is not the only one sending illegal immigrants to Chicago. The Democrat Mayor of El Paso has also been sending illegals to Chicago. In addition, the Biden administration has sent some illegals to the Windy City. Thus far, more than 20,000 illegals have gone to Chicago.
Many of the illegals entering Chicago are from Venezuela in the wake of the Biden administration’s decision to exempt them from deportation for much of 2023 — though that exemption was supposedly ended in October.
Since May, 463 buses have arrived in Chicago to drop off illegal border crossers, the Tribune reported.
The mayor has been under serious pressure as the Biden border crisis continues to explode with repercussions all across the United States.
Johnson recently suffered an embarrassing loss with his migrant policy when the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) shut down the construction of his migrant tent city in Brighton Park because of the toxins found in the soil of the six-acre vacant lot he had chosen for the facility.
Johnson claimed that the toxins were alleviated by the six inches of soil removed by workers to level the ground for the tent city to be built there, but IEPA officials said that the “limited” soil removal was not nearly enough to alleviate possible dangers from the toxins found on the site. State officials put an end to construction pending more amelioration efforts by city crews. Johnson has not said if he intends to follow through with those efforts or just abandon the project. Still, it is now too late into the approaching-winter season to continue on that site. So, at the very least, construction is over for the year and no tent city will be ready for use any time soon.
This was all seen as a glorious victory for residents of Brighton Park who have opposed the construction of the tent city since it was revealed.
The mayor has found his office to be toiling under a cloud since he won his election less than a year ago. Johnson has only been in office since May, but his approval rating has crashed to a disastrous 28 percent as the city reacts to his highly unpopular policies of coddling illegal aliens.
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