Chicago Digs In on Defending Its Tattered Migrant Welcome Mat

City council resists working with feds on immigration enforcement.

The nation’s third-largest city is turning its back on the national mandate American voters gave President Donald Trump in November to crack down on illegal immigration. The Chicago City Council on Jan. 15 rejected a bid to scale down the sanctuary city’s prodigious efforts to “protect” illegal aliens by allowing police to cooperate with federal agents in capturing and deporting violently criminal illegals. It wasn’t a close vote. The move to table the measure passed 39-11.

Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has become a lightning rod for criticism on the issue, was quick to take a victory lap. “Families can be assured [by] today’s display of this broad coalition that beat back an ordinance that quite frankly was just stoking the flames of fear,” Johnson crowed. “And so, we’re already off to a stronger start than where we were, you know, eight years ago.”

Johnson is referring to the beginning of Trump’s first White House term. Trump had vowed to kick off the largest mass deportation program in American history as soon as he is inaugurated on Jan. 20 for his second act – and he did so with a flurry of executive actions targeting border security and illegal immigration.The issue is widely seen as one of the two crucial challenges, along with the faltering economy, that propelled him to victory in 2024. Numerous Democrats have since conceded that their party effectively shot itself in the foot by supporting illegal aliens at the expense of the well-being of American citizens. But that does not seem to faze blue-dominated Chicago’s political establishment.

Can’t Go After Gangs, Drug Dealers, and Pimps

The measure, introduced by two aldermen, “would have allowed Chicago police officers to cooperate with federal immigration agents seeking to deport anyone arrested on suspicion of ‘gang-related activities,’ ‘drug-related activities,’ ‘prostitution-related activities’ or ‘sexual crimes involving minors’ or convicted of similar felony offenses,” WTTW, Chicago’s PBS affiliate, reported.

Who could possibly have a problem with this? Mayor Johnson would have none of it. Before the vote was taken, his office lobbied City Council members, warning such actions would lead to “increased over-policing in black and brown communities,” according to a memo provided to WTTW-TV.

What Johnson does not understand – or, to put it more accurately, does not want to understand – is that it is black and brown Chicagoans who are most fed up by the illegal immigration crisis crushing the Windy City today, not “white supremacist” MAGA “fanatics.”

In December, Johnson ejected irate residents who challenged him on the issue from a city meeting on his proposed 2025 budget. “You caused all this money to go to illegal immigrants,” one resident told Johnson during a public comment session. “Anything that you all pass is not genuine.”

Chicago Cash Spigot for Shelter Staffing Companies

And what about all that money? The cost has been staggering. “To date, the City of Chicago has spent more than $612 million providing emergency shelter and other services” to over 52,000 “migrants” who have hit town over the past two years, NBC 5-TV in Chicago reported Jan. 3. The overwhelming bulk of that vast amount, nearly $500 million, has gone to just two companies.

“Kansas-based Favorite Healthcare Staffing, which staffed the shelters and Kentucky-based Equitable Social Solutions, which together with another company, Reloshare, helped identify property owners and turned once-vacant warehouses in Chicago into migrant hotels” are making a mint off of the city’s sanctuary posturing, the station relates. “Favorite Healthcare Staffing routinely billed the city for 84 hours per week – per staffer, including overtime – rates that city alders called ‘exorbitant’ even after the contract was re-negotiated to lower the hourly costs,” NBC 5 states.

Yes, those same city alders who believe they are being taken for a ride by the contractors who roll out the actual infrastructure behind their pandering public welcome mat just voted 39-11 to scuttle sensible actions that would reduce the financial burden on Chicago and protect its citizenry from violent criminal aliens.

Alderman Silvana Tabares co-sponsored the tabled measure that would have allowed Chicago police to work with federal agents on detaining and deporting criminal migrants. She hit the nail on the head by explaining that there are at least 612 million reasons why this crisis is being allowed to fester.

“These immigrant advocates, they don’t want to solve the problem. They want to… it fuels their narrative and capacity to fundraise, and so they profit on fear,” Tabares told CBS News Chicago. “All of this is just political theater for them to have a boogeyman to point at the next four years.”

That’s worked out well for them for the first quarter of this century. But for many regular Americans, including an ever-growing number of black and brown Chicagoans, a tipping point has been reached. The political theater isn’t sustainable anymore in the face of the dire social and financial threat posed by massive unchecked illegal immigration. It’s a double-fisted lesson Chicago, like its fellow big city blue bastions New York City and Denver, is destined to learn the hard way. Too many people are being hurt for this to go on – and sooner or later, the money runs out.