President Joe Biden’s border crisis seems to be setting Chicago’s self-proclaimed “progressive” Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois’s Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker at odds after it was reported that Johnson’s administration plans to stop opening new shelters for incoming illegal border crossers, a policy change that has Pritzker “deeply concerned.”
According to Block Club Chicago, the Democrat Chicago mayor, who has been drowning in debt and condemnation thanks to his permissive policies for the flood of Biden’s migrants, is quietly telling the city’s aldermen that he is calling a halt to looking for new places to set up additional migrant shelters.
Insiders report that on December 22, Jonson instituted a “pause” on efforts to open new shelters due to “budget constraints.” Instead of opening new shelters, he has switched to a plan of “rightsizing” the shelter system, and he is focusing on tossing out people currently in shelters instead of increasing the number of beds available.
The outlet quotes mayoral spokesperson Ronnie Reese as saying that City Hall is now working more on finding ways to send migrants away through “outmigration and resettlement services” as a way of emptying beds at shelters.
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Rebecca Brannon, Independent Photojournalist/LOCAL NEWS X /TMXBut the news seems to have taken Pritzker by surprise. Pritzker said the new direction the Windy City is taking has caused him to turn “deeply concerned.”
In a Monday presser, Pritzker even said he hoped that the stories being published on the city’s change in policy were not true.
“I’m deeply concerned,” he told the media. “We do not have enough shelter as it is in the city of Chicago.”
NEW: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker reacts to news that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is telling aldermen that the city will stop setting up new migrant shelters.
— Austin Berg (@Austin__Berg) January 22, 2024
“I’m deeply concerned … the city has not told the state where they would like us to put our resources to build new… pic.twitter.com/c6YFXuNKBk
He went on to note that the city has apparently stopped communicating with his office:
The city has not told the state where they would like us to put our resources to build new shelters or help them build new shelters. So, we can’t help if they don’t identify those locations. And we need to make sure that we’re not ending shelter capacity, as the city is now planning to do at the end of winter.
“If you think this problem is going to end when the temperature warms up, it’s not. We will still need shelter for these people,” he continued. “So, I’m deeply concerned, and I’m hoping that at least the plan that I read this morning… is not one that they will actually end up carrying out.”
City officials say they have “welcomed over 34,000 new arrivals” since August 31, 2022. An info sheet notes that migrants will be limited to 60 days in a shelter, then turned out.
The new plan seems to signal that the massive migrant tent city that Johnson had commissioned will now be mothballed, and construction will not continue, nor will further permits and permissions be sought from the state Environmental Protection Agency. The environmental agency halted construction of the tent city in November after it determined that Johnson had not taken enough precautions to clean the site of toxins.
Signs protesting the placement of a migrant camp in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood on December 1, 2023, are posted on a fence at the site near 38th Street and California Avenue. (Trent Sprague/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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