Chicago Finding Out the Hard Way the Real Meaning of 'Sanctuary City'

Chicago first became a “Sanctuary City” back in 1985 when Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order prohibiting city employees from enforcing federal immigration laws. But it wasn’t until recently that being a Sanctuary City actually became fun.

During the Trump years, posturing as a sanctuary city was what all the cool cities were doing. And didn’t it feel great to have Chicago thumb the city’s nose at Donald Trump and his “fascist” ICE bullyboys?

Today, Chicago isn’t quite as “welcoming” as it was back then. That’s because Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused upwards of 12,000 illegal aliens into Chicago, giving the city’s outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot a bad case of the vapors.

“Chicago is a Welcoming City and we collaborate with County, State, and community partners to rise to this challenge, but your lack of consideration or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way,” Lightfoot wrote in a letter that she sent to Abbott on Monday.

Lightfoot called Abbott’s planned busing of illegals from Texas “inhumane and dangerous.” The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board had another way to describe it.

Chicago has heard that Texas will resume migrant busing on May 1. “The national immigration problem,” Ms. Lightfoot says, “will not be solved by passing on the responsibility to other cities.” But the burden of this humanitarian crisis shouldn’t fall only on border states, and the virtue of Mr. Abbott’s approach is in making progressives confront it.

The website for Ms. Lightfoot’s (failed) re-election campaign brags that she ended “police collaboration” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “terminated ICE access to citywide databases,” and signed an executive order so city benefits don’t depend on citizenship. America’s immigration problems won’t be fixed until Ms. Lightfoot’s Democratic Party awakens from this progressive daydream.

Lightfoot’s “not in my backyard” approach to the immigration crisis is finally getting pushback. Madame Mayor, the fact is that it’s in everyone’s backyard and that it’s ludicrous to believe that your “moral posturing” somehow absolves Chicago of responsibility for encouraging the illegal alien crisis.

“I know by your actions that you either do not see or do not care about the trauma these migrants have already faced and continue to suffer under the humanitarian crisis you have created,” Lightfoot wrote. “But I beseech you anyway: treat these individuals with the respect and dignity that they deserve.”

“To tell them to go to Chicago or to inhumanely bus them here is an inviable and misleading choice.”

It’s called “deflection,” and Democratic big city mayors like Lightfoot, Eric Adams of New York, and Muriel Bowser of Washington have all mastered the technique to absolve themselves of responsibility.

The bottom line is that they want to be known as a “sanctuary city” without having to do the heavy lifting required to make that empty saying a reality. And until they embrace the true meaning of that phrase, their rhetoric will be as empty as their leftist heads.