TRENTON — In Edison, New Jersey, the mayor warned that he would send migrants back to the border if they arrived in his city on buses. In Rockford, Illinois, authorities indicated that the 355 migrants who arrived aboard a charter flight would not stay there.
“There is no passage for migrant buses at this exit,” read signs posted along Interstate 55 in Grundy County, Illinois, southeast of Chicago, during the weekend before Christmas.
The restless officials of the suburbs and cities on the outskirts of Chicago and NY They do not want to receive more migrants from the southern border amid attempts to avoid the bus restrictions that were implemented in those two cities. With this, a new front opens in response to the efforts led by the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, to pay for migrants to leave his state.
Thousands continue to enter through the border
The response of the authorities of those cities occurs in the midst of what the acting commissioner of the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) classified as “unprecedented arrivals”, with more than 10,000 illegal entries daily since the month of August.
Big-city mayors — including New York’s Eric Adams and Chicago’s Brandon Johnson — have been asking the federal government for months for assistance in dealing with the migrant surge.
Abbott has bused more than 80,000 migrants from Texas to Democratic-run cities since 2022, although some buses have also arrived from other states. The Abbott government also recently began leasing planes after Chicago and New York began imposing fines and penalties on buses that make unscheduled stops to unload passengers.
A plane carrying 355 migrants landed at Chicago Rockford International Airport from San Antonio at 1 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, and local authorities reported that they all boarded buses to leave the airport, which is located about 137 kilometers (85 miles) from downtown Chicago. The city of Chicago said the migrants aboard the Boeing 777 boarded eight buses chartered by Abbott to be dropped off in “different suburbs.” Days earlier, a flight took 120 migrants to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
More restrictions
Some of Chicago’s suburbs have also implemented or are considering bus regulations. A Tinley Park ordinance promises to “issue citations, impound or take other appropriate action” to buses that make unscheduled stops in the town of about 60,000 residents.
The town of Broadview, a suburb of about 8,000 residents west of Chicago, said last week it had to take action “because dropping passengers in inclement or severe weather conditions without a coordinated plan poses a significant health risk.” , safety and well-being” of the people on board the buses.
In New Jersey, migrants are being dropped off at train stations in Jersey City, Secaucus and Trenton, according to state officials. The office of the governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, has said that the state is being used primarily as a transit point and that “almost all of them” are heading to New York. Murphy’s office added that the entity is collaborating with local and federal authorities, but did not release further details.
Murphy declared last summer that New Jersey could not support the arrivals amid discussions that the federal government was considering using the Atlantic City airport as a possible destination. It was a change of position for Murphy, a self-described progressive who first ran for governor in 2017 and hinted that he would declare New Jersey a “sanctuary state,” a term used for places with migrant-friendly policies.
There is no capacity to receive more migrants
Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said most of the migrants who arrived in his city had moved to New York, but that 10 people have remained with relatives in the area.
“We empathize when someone tries to seek asylum or when someone tries to receive them. But we do not have the capacity to receive them,” she pointed out.
Edison Mayor Sam Joshi posted on Facebook that he has “issued instructions to our law enforcement and emergency management departments to rent a bus to transport migrants back to the Texas-Mexico border.”
Disputes between authorities
The mayors of New York and Chicago have blamed Abbott.
“This is a diabolical plan by this governor and we are going to have to respond based on what he is doing,” Adams said Tuesday.
Just hours after the flight arrived in Rockford, Johnson told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “Abbott is determined to continue sowing the seeds of chaos” by sending people in the middle of the night without warning.
Abbott has defended his tactics, arguing that President Joe Biden needs to do more to secure the border. Her spokesperson, Renae Eze, renewed her attacks on Democratic mayors on Tuesday, stating that her hypocrisy “has no limits.”
The governor of Texas complains about the burden that the arrival of thousands of migrants represents for his state, which has generated a serious crisis on the southern border. Biden still does not respond to the immigration chaos that is now moving to large American cities.
A rising crisis
Grundy County Sheriff Ken Briley said the signs on the highway south of Chicago were part of an emergency plan to prevent people from being left out in the cold without money, food or clothing. winter during the holiday weekend. No buses have stopped in the county and the signs have already been removed, Briley said.
About 30 Venezuelan migrants were recently dropped off at 4:30 a.m. at a gas station in Kankakee County, according to Sheriff Mike Downey. “They were left without money, food, proper clothing, and they had the idea that they had reached their destination.”
“I don’t think this problem is going to stop,” Briely added. “We’re a rural community. We just don’t have the same tax base as the city of Chicago to be able to provide those resources.”
Source: With information from AP
