Chicago City Wire

Ald. Ray Lopez is slamming Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s declaration of a state of emergency after years of declaring the city a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants. 

The move will be one of the last for Lightfoot whose last day in office is May 15. 

“Well, Lori Lightfoot's capacity to amaze us never ceases to end,” Lopez said on Fox News. “You know, the fact that she has been spending $20 million a month since August of last year after declaring Chicago would be welcoming to all with no restrictions in February 2021. And now to say we're at a breaking point is just outrageous. She helped create this crisis by not putting pressure on her Democratic colleagues in the federal government to address the illegal immigration that we see to address the asylum seekers that are not being processed that we continue to see. And now the city of Chicago's 22 police districts have become housing shelters. Our park districts are becoming housing shelters.” 

Despite the need to tackle the issue, “All of our programs are being pushed to the side with no end in sight," Lopez remarked. And all that the outgoing mayor can come up with is we need more money such as needing the Illinois National Guard, "which we will have to pay for it, to address it, and no real resolution as to how to humanely deal with these young people and these families in our midst.”

“We have a 40% vacancy rate in the downtown," Lopez told Fox and Friends. "She's trying to spend $1,000,000,000 to make it a residential area. And she's forcing our police to have to work in these kinds of environments where many of these individuals require help. They have communicable diseases, all of which are, our officers are being exposed to and taking home on a daily basis. It's disgusting. It's shameful in Chicago should be able to do better.”

In the past 10 months, 8,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in Chicago.

The emergency declaration notes “the City's resources now stretched to the breaking point, extraordinary measures are necessary.” The declaration points to waves of illegal immigrants entering the city “by various means, including on airplanes, by bus and on foot.” The declaration notes "a shortage of available space, existing facilities are full, newly created facilities are full, and hundreds of migrants are now temporarily sheltering in police stations.”

In a press release, the City of Chicago called out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by name. 

“Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot issued an emergency declaration in response to the surge of new arrivals since last month, with large numbers of people, mostly families, arriving to Chicago and following the arrival today of 48 individuals and families inhumanely bussed to Chicago by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Since August 2022, the City has coordinated a multi-departmental, city-wide strategy in partnership with the State and Cook County for receiving and providing emergency care for over 8,000 new arrivals,” the press release reads.

The move comes as Title 42, a federal policy limiting entries at the border expired on May 11.

Abbott lampooned Lightfoot’s stance on the issue. 

“As the mayor of a self-declared sanctuary city, it is ironic to hear you complain about Chicago’s struggle to deal with a few thousand illegal immigrants, which is a fraction of the record-high numbers we deal with in Texas on a regular basis. Texas border towns like Eagle Pass, Brownsville, and Laredo—and even bigger cities like El Paso—cannot handle the flood of illegal immigrants rushing across our southern border,” Abbott said in a letter, Chicago City Wire earlier reported. “With Title 42 expulsions set to end next week, the federal government has estimated that we could have up to 13,000 illegal immigrants cross the U.S.–Mexico border every single day. Some reports indicate that there are nearly 35,000 waiting to cross into El Paso as soon as Title 42 expulsions are no longer in effect. If Chicago can’t deal with 8,000 in less than a year, how are small Texas border communities supposed to manage 13,000 in just one day?”