Mayor Brandon Johnson visited the White House Thursday morning to sound the alarm on Chicago’s migrant crisis and ask for additional federal funding.
The mayor sat down with Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients and other officials with the Department of Homeland Security to discuss Chicago’s need for additional federal relief, according to mayoral spokesman Ronnie Reese.
Officials initially said Biden himself was at the meeting but later clarified that the president did not, in fact, attend.
Biden administration officials did not promise anything in response to Johnson’s ask for at least $5 billion in additional aid for migrants, but “these were very productive and positive conversations,” Reese said. The president is attempting to push a supplemental $1.4 billion package for migrant shelters and services through Congress, but Illinois leaders have said much more is direly needed.
“From day one, I’ve said that the federal government has to do more,” Johnson said Wednesday in a news conference where he confirmed the trip. “Look, Chicago is leaning in. We have borne the brunt of the responsibility here. That’s not an equitable distribution of how government should cooperate. … We are a model example for the rest of the world. And we’ll take that message to DC.”
In addition to migrant support, the mayor asked Biden administration officials Thursday for more resources to help gun violence victims, Reese said.
Johnson’s trip followed a recent joint letter with the mayors of Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and New York urging the president to meet with them and secure more funding for their rapidly growing migrant populations. It was not clear how many of Johnson’s mayoral counterparts were there for the Thursday meeting with the president.
For months, Johnson has sought to dial up the urgency in his public messaging to the White House regarding the migrants while still showing a unified front with the leader of the Democratic Party. That has at times been a delicate dance, especially as Chicago was chosen as the location of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
This summer, Johnson warned federal officials that Chicago could not go on with the pace of new arrivals without more funding, though his surrogates have taken on a more critical tone with what they say is Biden’s failure to address the humanitarian crisis.
The president, seeking reelection next year, has taken some of his sharpest intraparty blows on the topic of immigration, as scores of migrants struggle to get by without work permits in Democratic cities.
In Chicago, that has taken on the form of more than 3,300 migrants sleeping on the floors of police stations and airports. Johnson has vowed to get them out and into heated base camps by winter, but the frosty start to the week has left many advocates worried that time is running out.
Later Thursday, Reese said Johnson met with U.S. Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic House minority leader, and Jim Clyburn, assistant Democratic leader, as well as with the Illinois congressional delegation and a group of senators including Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.
Although Johnson and Illinois congressmen officially asked for $5 billion in more migrant relief from Washington, some House members, such as U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Chicago, are calling for $10 billion, her spokesman confirmed.
Meanwhile, a mini-rebellion brewed at home Thursday as a group of aldermen held a City Council meeting in a failed attempt to add a question to March primary ballots asking local voters “Should the city of Chicago continue to keep its designation as a Sanctuary City?”
The question would be nonbinding, so even if it did appear on the ballot, a yes vote would not change the existing sanctuary ordinance. That ordinance bars official city cooperation with federal law enforcement to deport immigrants in the country without legal permission and ensures those immigrants can use city services.
But the results of such an up-or-down vote could have symbolic weight with the migrant crisis worsening and Chicagoans torn on how to respond.
One of the proposed referendum’s sponsors, Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, said his intention was “not to eliminate Chicago as a sanctuary city” but find solutions “to stop the bleeding that we’re undertaking right now,” citing the ongoing cost of caring for an influx of asylum-seekers.
Procedural volleys between Beale, his ally on the issue, Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, and the mayor’s stand-in at the rostrum, Ald. Samantha Nugent, 39th, eventually ended with no debate, no vote and a muddled end to the meeting.
Nugent declared the proceedings adjourned, the lights in council chambers were switched off, and staff quickly removed her gavel.
