Amid searing opposition from residents, Chicago City Council has delayed a vote on $70 million in funding for illegal immigrants.
Mayor Brandon Johnson told the Chicago Tribune that the delay is “just a simple parliamentary tactic that is used to ensure that we have a full robust debate coming Friday” when the city makes a final vote.
The city had already allocated up to $300 million for illegal immigrants before Mr. Johnson requested the additional $70 million.
The city’s budget committee voted 20-8 to bring the proposal before the council.
Alderman Chris Taliaferro warned that city leaders have turned their back on the residents of Chicago, stating during the meeting, “We are not taking care of our own. We have all but forgotten the residents on the West Side and the South Side.”
“Seventy million dollars and y’all won’t even put a million dollars in our neighborhoods,” he told the council.
The second speaker, one of the three who supported giving the money to illegal immigrants, removed his mask before calling “the migrant crisis a resource crisis,” adding that $70 million was too little.
“And we need vast resources to protect our new community members,” he said as boos from the crowd grew.
“You can fight it as much as you want but these are our neighbors and are now a part of our communities,” he said. “Immigrants are our basis for our future as a city ever since the beginning to now. Immigrants are the lifeblood of the city. We need to support them.”
The third speaker said city officials have “turned their back” on the citizens of Chicago by taking funds out of the city budget that could be directed toward the city and residents.
Instead, those funds are going to “complete aliens to this country.”
“They’re showing up in New York and Chicago, attacking people in the streets,” he said. “The police are fighting with them in the shelters that you guys are funding. You guys think it’s a great idea but yet your police officers are getting attacked. Your public is getting attacked. You’re putting lives at risk by doing what you’re doing and none of you care about it because the mighty dollar sits on top. As long as somebody’s in your pocket that you’re working with, you’re OK with it. You don’t care about the citizens.”
He added that a reckoning for the council’s actions awaits.
“I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look good,” he said. “And I don’t respect most of the people that are in here because you don’t your back on the citizens and said you’re [sic] voice doesn’t matter.”
‘Y’all Turned Your Backs on Black Chicago’
The fourth speaker identified himself as homeless. He criticized the council for giving funds to new arrivals while ignoring residents who have lived in the city their whole lives and are continuing to struggle.“Y’all have turned your backs on black Chicago,” he said. “Y’all are implementing our demise here in the city through financing and budgeting.”
The fifth speaker, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, began with a quote from the Bible verse 1 Timothy 5:8, stating, “But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
She said that the initial $51 million for supporting illegal immigrants came out of the city’s opioid settlement fund which needs to be steered toward alleviating the opioid crisis instead of going to people who haven’t “paid a dime into the tax base.”
“Put that money back in the opioid settlement fund,” she said. “We need that money in my neighborhood. We need that on my block.”
The sixth speaker praised the administration’s work in funding illegal immigrants. He stated that he believes in the mayor’s mission and that he “hoped to be hired for some job by the city.”
“I want to be an asset to the city or your administration,” he said, before ending his comment in prayer.
The seventh speaker, wearing another red “No More Blue” shirt, said it’s time to vote city officials out of office.
“We’re going to vote, and we’re going to vote you out,” she said. “That’s what time it is.”
Social Justice Advocate Blames Systemic Racism
The eighth speaker identified herself as a representative of the Chicago-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice.She also supported giving the $51 million to illegal immigrants.
“The common thread in what you have heard today is our anger in a broken system that we must reimagine together,” she said. “It’s the system that maintains generational disinvestment in communities of color across Chicago.”
She blamed this common thread on “systemic racism.”
“This systemic racism has also blocked any positive action on immigration from Congress for almost 40 years,” she said. “Immigrants are simply not a priority in the federal system.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Chicago City Council for comment.
