Sanctuary cities have regrets as flood of illegal migrants continues
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[July 24, 2023]
By Casey Harper | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Leaders of major metros around the U.S. have
pushed for more progressive immigration policies in recent years by
declaring themselves safe havens for illegal immigrants. Now, however,
as the realities of the financial and social impacts of those policies
sink in, some local leaders are thinking twice.
Millions of illegal immigrants have flowed across the southern border
since President Joe Biden took office, with many seeking haven in
self-proclaimed "sanctuary cities."
“The policies of the Biden administration have certainly upped the ante
on this sort of virtue signaling in recent years,” Ira Mehlman from the
Federation for American Immigration Reform told The Center Square,
referring to sanctuary cities. “Some 2.3 million new illegal aliens have
entered the country since Biden took office, and a lot of them have
wound up in these sanctuary jurisdictions, either on their own,
transported by the federal government, or transported by other
jurisdictions that simply cannot handle the influx.”
Cities like New York and Chicago have dismissed concerns from border
states in recent years, but now they are raising the alarm that they
cannot handle the flood of migrants.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams publicly said last week the city cannot
handle any more migrants. He told reporters that the city plans to
pass out flyers at the southern border to discourage illegal immigrants
from traveling to NYC.
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As The Center Square previously reported, the Chicago City Council and
Mayor Brandon Johnson heard from Chicago residents who voiced concerns
about the increase in migrants and the taxpayer funds being spent to
support them.
"What people are feeling is that the people who have been in these
neighborhoods for generations, they have been treated inhumanely by the
same government that is making efforts to provide good care to the
asylum seekers," state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, told The Center
Square.
In 2020, Illinois taxpayers began to subsidize the cost of undocumented
immigrant health care for those over the age of 65. In 2022, the state
budget included subsidizing coverage for those over the age of 42. As
part of the state's fiscal year 2024 budget that began July 1, Gov. J.B.
Pritzker modified the program to cover those only over 65 for a total
budgeted amount of $550 million. The program was scaled way back because
costs were ballooning to more than $1 billion.
Nearly 100,000 migrants have come to New York City this year, but that
figure doesn't compare to the total coming through at the southern
border every month.
Recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that over 175,000
illegal immigrants came into the U.S. last month alone, and that figure
is much lower than the monthly numbers from earlier this year. Experts
say the figure is probably much higher, but fewer agents are available
to track how many migrants are entering the U.S. between ports of entry.
In the first five months of this year, the total number of illegal
immigrants coming into the U.S. via the southern border was more than
the population of eight U.S. states.
Democratic mayors also pushed back when Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose states bear the brunt of illegal
migration more than most others, started transporting migrants to other
cities around the country.
Texas sees hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers regularly
but faced backlash for busing a few thousand migrants to self-proclaimed
sanctuary cities like Denver, Chicago, New York City and Washington,
D.C. over several months.
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![](../images/072423PIX/news_b46.jpg)
Map of sanctuary governments for illegal
migrants around the U.S. (Courtesy: Center for Immigration Studies)
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jul/24/images/ads/current/peasley_lda_051513.png)
"What none of us need is more political theater and partisan
gamesmanship pitting jurisdictions against each other and exacerbating
this situation instead of advocating for real solutions to this
challenge," Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said in May. "If Gov. Abbott
thinks he’s going to win over allies to his cause here in Denver with
this latest stunt, he’s going to be sorely mistaken. And we’re more than
happy to send him the bill for any additional support we have to provide
now because of his failure at managing his own state.”
Abbott sent a few thousand migrants to Washington, D.C., also a
sanctuary city, last year, prompting Mayor Muriel Bowser to declare a
public health emergency.
"Our ability to assist people in need at this scale is very limited,"
Bowser said at the time.
Bowser lamented that the city’s homeless shelters were filling up with
illegal immigrants and pushed to have the migrants end up at other final
destinations.
Abbott shot back:
“D.C. is experiencing a fraction of the disastrous impact the border
crisis has caused Texas,” Abbot said. “Mayor Bowser should stop
attacking Texas for securing the border [and] demand Joe Biden do his
job.”
Local law enforcement have felt the burden of the surge of migrants,
some of whom have prior criminal records.
"The plain truth is that sanctuary city policies hobble law
enforcement's ability to protect the public from dangerous criminals,”
Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told
The Center Square. “Unlike American-born offenders, authorities almost
never know the true criminal histories of illegal alien offenders who
previously committed crimes abroad because their home countries don't
have or don't provide their records to American law enforcement."
Johnson argued crime from some illegal immigrants has pushed local
leaders to regret inviting the influx.
“Now, these politicians are abandoning the virtues they were so proud to
signal before they realized the disaster these policies wrought,”
Johnson said.
Ken Oliver, an immigration expert at the Texas Public Policy Foundation,
echoed that sentiment, pointing to the financial burden on local cities
that the influx of migrants creates.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jul/24/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
“As the taxpaying citizens of sanctuary cities become increasingly aware
of the costs of sanctuary policies, including the benefits of housing,
food and protection from the consequences of lawbreaking that are
extended to inadmissible aliens but not to them, what we’re seeing is a
backlash that is growing and well justified,” Oliver told The Center
Square. “That backlash and the budgetary realities facing cities and
states at the receiving end of the Biden border crisis are driving a new
and welcome trend. It is fitting that the unwinding of unsustainable
sanctuary policies is beginning in America’s leading sanctuary enclave
of New York City.”
Oliver argued the trend will continue to grow.
“That pressure to unwind sanctuary policies is not only going to
continue to build throughout the country, but should also trickle up in
the months and years ahead to spur the reversal of the federal policies
that created the crisis in the first place,” he said. |