The city of Chicago has had enough of Texas Governor Greg Abbott's caravan of illegal aliens to northern cities. The city council passed strict measures to keep unscheduled "rogue" buses from dropping off migrants in the city. and has now begun to enforce them.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the new law "required drop-offs to occur on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m." The city also limited bus arrivals to two per hour and designated a location in the the West Loop for the drop-offs.
“Before we began busing illegal immigrants up to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos and all of the problems that come with it,” Abbott said in an interview with ABC News’ "Nightline" a year ago. “Now the rest of America is understanding exactly what’s going on.”
And that's the long and short of it. Not only were northern cities ignoring the crisis at the border, they were crowing about how superior they were because of the "sanctuary city" label.
Abbott has almost singlehandedly created rifts in the Democratic Party over the immigration issue. Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist who also serves in the Texas State Guard, explains the basis for the discord.
“What you’re seeing with these numbers is that some of the blowback is from communities that feel like they’re now competing for resources, competing for services with those folks,” Steinhauser said of northern state's struggles with migrant influxes. “It’s now hitting the Democratic party in a Democratic-run city and creating a wedge within the Democratic party.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker aren't speaking these days after Pritzker torpedoed Johnson's plan to build a tent city on Chicago's west side. The city said the site was safe while Pritzker's EPA claimed it was a toxic waste dump. Meanwhile, Johnson has thousands of illegal aliens still needing shelter as the temperature in Chico plummets below freezing.
Related: Is Illinois Still Offering $9K to Illegals for Rent?
So Johnson and the city council want to stop the caravan of buses that Greg Abbott is sending from the border.
The new penalties passed Wednesday are “an escalation,” said Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Mayor Brandan Johnson’s deputy chief of staff. All recent migrant-carrying buses have violated the November policy by not getting required approval before arriving, she said. The buses’ owners have received notices to appear in courts to receive fines, she added.
“Since we have passed that original ordinance, every single bus has been in violation because none of them have filled out the online form for a permit 48 hours in advance to be approved,” she said.
A Chicago Department of Transportation spokesperson confirmed Thursday the department had not received any applications from unscheduled intercity buses.
Could the bus companies be in the dark about the penalties? Perhaps they don't believe that the city would take their buses. This is no doubt going to be challenged in court, and the bus companies have an eminently winnable case. Why target only buses from the border? Why not require all buses to get a permit to come into the city and designate drop-off points for them?
The new penalties aim to add safety for arriving migrants, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff said. She declined to predict how the tougher policy might affect how many buses and migrants arrive in Chicago.
“It’s so hard to tell,” Pacione-Zayas said. “It’s a very fluid situation. We don’t have control over what happens at the border.”
No one has control over what happens at the border. That's the point. Abbott will keep sending busloads of illegals north as long as Biden refuses to act on border security.
That means a lot more buses for Chicago, New York, and other northern cities.
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