By Illinois Review
Embattled Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), who sits at a 28 percent approval rating among local voters, is lashing out at Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) and blaming the popular governor for the “chaos” he’s created by bussing migrants from the southern border to sanctuary cities like Chicago and New York City.
During a downtown press conference, Johnson didn’t hold back.
“The issue is not just how we respond in the city of Chicago, it’s the fact we have a governor, a governor, an elected official in the state of Texas, that is placing families on buses without shoes, cold, wet, tired, hungry, afraid, traumatized, and then they come to the city of Chicago, where we have homelessness, mental health clinics that have been shut down and closed. We have people who are seeking employment. The governor of Texas needs to take a look in the mirror, with the chaos he’s causing for the people of this country.”
Johnson then concluded, “This is not just a Chicago dynamic. He [Abbott] is attacking our country!”
In Chicago, streams of buses carrying illegals are dropping people off all over the city day and night, straining resources and forcing the city and state to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to address the surge, while local residents on the south and west sides of the city continue to suffer from poor economic and housing conditions. It’s estimated that nearly 25,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago in the last year, costing more than $400 million.
In early November, Mayor Johnson’s Chicago City Council floor leader Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward) resigned from his leadership position after bullying Ald. Emma Mitts (37th Ward) during a special meeting to discuss a referendum regarding Chicago’s sanctuary city status. Ramirez-Rosa also resigned from his position as chairman of the Zoning Committee.
Reports revealed that Ramirez-Rosa was physically blocking Mitts from entering the council chamber floor to prevent a quorum of 26 council members who were going to vote on a measure that would create a referendum on whether or not Chicago should remain a sanctuary city. The vote couldn’t take place until 26 members were on the floor, which Ramirez-Rosa, who served as Mayor Johnson’s floor leader, was trying to prevent.
Later that same month, Johnson was forced to scrap his plans to convert Amundsen Park fieldhouse into a migrant shelter after local residents angrily opposed the proposal – a plan that would have canceled or relocated activities for seniors and local children to other communities.
Donald Glover, president of the Amundsen Park Advisory Council was vocal about his opposition to the mayor’s plans.
“The city did a really terrible job at handling this. They held our community and our park hostage for almost 60 days. We couldn’t use the park. Our kids couldn’t use it, our seniors couldn’t use it and they could have been more transparent. Hopefully in the future they will include rather than exclude people.”
Local resident Linda Johnson echoed Glover’s comments.
“Our senior program had to stop. Some of the seniors had to go to different places. They wind up doing a lot of activities at home… the seniors wind up feeling like they were in a pandemic all over again and that was not fair to them at all.”
Earlier this month, Gov. JB Pritzker (D) canceled the city’s plans to build a $65 million migrant tent camp in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood after it was discovered that toxic chemicals were found on site – a revelation that shocked city officials and residents.
Several Chicago aldermen have called for the mayor’s administration officials who were involved in the discussions to resign after they repeatedly assured city leaders and residents that the site was safe to build on and that the toxic chemicals had all been removed.
Johnson, who has one of the lowest approval ratings of any Chicago mayor since 1979, continues to struggle to find answers to the migrant crisis plaguing the city.
In 2024, Chicago will host the Democratic National Convention.
