The mayors of New York City, Chicago and Denver asked the Biden administration Wednesday for more assistance in helping address the migrant crisis in their cities.
The sanctuary city mayors are requesting that the White House and Congress provide work permits for migrants, additional funding, while also asking for coordination with other state and local governments. New York City has received roughly 160,000 migrants, while Denver has received more than 34,000 migrants and Chicago has received more than 30,000 migrants. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Gun Background Check Database Contains Nearly 14 Million Entries For Illegal Immigrants)
“We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis. We are literally building a system as we go along,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday.
Federal authorities have continued to see record illegal immigration at the southern border in recent weeks, exceeding capacity with more than 20,000 migrants in custody each day, according to federal data recently obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. In fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol recorded more than 2 million encounters with illegal migrants crossing the southern border, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
“If there’s no federal support, there’s no coordinated entry, there’s no work authorization, then I think cities will have to look at dramatically reducing the amount of services we offer or dramatically cutting our city budgets,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has already announced a 5% budget cut across all city services, but migrants continue to strain resources, he said during the event.
“For many months we were able to keep the visualization of this crisis from hitting our streets, but we have reached a breaking point. We are no longer able to do that because of the volume and numbers,” Adams said.
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The mayors have each implemented efforts to also crack down on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s migrant transports. Adams signed an executive order to restrict the buses and require notice of their arrivals, while Johnston said his city is also cracking down on the transports.
The Chicago mayor began impounding buses that don’t adhere to certain restrictions that include a 48 hour arrival notice.
“Unfortunately, what the governor of Texas has done is he has seen our desire to come up with a coordinated effort and he has been provocated to retaliate against us establishing structure and calm,” Johnson said.
In response to Johnson’s ordinance, Abbott began flying migrants to the Windy City.
“Sanctuary city Chicago started obstructing and targeting our busing mission. Texas will now expand our operation to include flights to Chicago,” Abbott said in a statement at the time. “Until Biden steps up to secure the border, we will continue to provide overwhelmed Texas border towns with much-needed relief.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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