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Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Wednesday he will visit the southern U.S. border imminently, as city predictions that buses from Texas would spike to new heights were turning true.
In a post-City Council news conference Wednesday afternoon, the mayor said Chicago was now expecting at least 14 — and as many as 22 — buses that day and delivered a promise: “I am going to the border as soon as possible.” He did not specify when.
Earlier in the day, his deputy chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, told the Tribune that city officials were making plans to send a delegation to the Texas border for a learning expedition as the number of asylum-seekers sent on chartered buses from southern border cities to Chicago reaches record levels.
“We’re trying to get out there pretty soon. It’s imminent, because we really need to understand the process at the border. What the situation is. See it firsthand,” Pacione-Zayas said.
Immigration rates in border cities are up by the thousands, due to a combination of poverty, violence, immigration policy changes and word-of-mouth from migrants who have arrived in places like Chicago. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said recently his city was at a “breaking point” and welcomed the buses carrying hundreds of migrants to northern sanctuary cities.
More than 17,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since the first bus from Texas arrived in August 2022. As of Wednesday, there were over 9,000 migrants in city-run shelters, more than 2,300 sleeping at police stations as they wait for shelter openings and over 700 sleeping on the floor at O’Hare International Airport.
Pacione-Zayas said it’s unclear who or how many people would go on the expedition, but the goal of the trip is to speak with government and nonprofit leaders who are at the source of the busing.
City officials were still having internal conversations about the trip, Pacione-Zayas said, and it would likely be in the next few weeks.
“I think we need to have some conversations about managing expectations in Chicago,” Pacione-Zayas said. “People need to also understand how things change radically with our change of seasons.”
The mayor’s deputy chief of staff said she envisioned migrants coming off buses with wet shoes in the middle of December. She said it’s “reckless” to send people who have traversed multiple countries on foot — carrying the trauma from their long journey, and many with preexisting medical conditions.
It’s a vision volunteers who help migrants say they witness regularly.
“They arrive. They’re starving. They don’t have any clothes. The babies have dirty diapers,” said Annie Gomberg, a lead volunteer organizer at the Austin District police station on the West Side.
A week before his scheduled budget address, Johnson nodded to the “tremendous sacrifice” that Chicagoans were taking on for asylum-seekers. Johnson’s budget must outline how the mayor plans to plug a $538 million deficit partially due to the rising migrant costs.
The mayor has not ruled out new revenue to account for the gap.
Johnson also addressed ongoing discord in Black communities, including on the West Side where he lives. During Wednesday’s meeting, some Black public speakers interrupted and condemned him on Chicago’s migrant response.
“I know there’s been a tremendous burden particularly on Black Chicago. I am fully aware of that. Yeah, I know where I live,” Johnson said. “Yeah, I know how many schools have been shut down in Austin. Mental health clinics. Administration after administration has taken away from Black people. Not mine.”
He shot down unspecified critics who believed that Black residents feel shortchanged by migrant services.
“When individuals say that Black folks want what migrants want, it’s not true. It’s not,” Johnson said. “Comparing the conditions in which descendants of slaves have had to endure to migrants who are sleeping on floors, I question how much you actually care and love about Black people and understand their condition.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García on Wednesday wrote a letter co-signed by 28 other elected officials in Illinois to President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, asking the administration to provide more federal resources to respond to the migrant crisis.
The letter urged the Biden administration to provide humanitarian parole and work permits, a better process of issuing green cards, flexible Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for shelter expenses and legal support services.
Chicago Tribune’s Laura Rodriguez Presa contributed.
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