From WWW.DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
Ousted Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott pleading with him to stop sending migrants to the Windy City.
In the letter posted to Twitter on Sunday, Lightfoot urged Abbott to reconsider ‘this dangerous and inhumane action.’
She sympathized with the border towns in Texas dealing with the issue, but said it won’t be resolved by passing on the responsibility to other cities.
The southwest land border has seen 1,223,067 migrant encounters this year so far and saw 2,378,944 encounters in 2022.
Lightfoot argued that Chicago already has 8,000 migrants to care for and lacks the additional shelters and other resources to fully accommodate more migrants in the city, which she says Abbott is doing for political motivations.
Last fall, Abbott began sending migrant buses to sanctuary cities across the country, including Chicago, New York City and Washington, D. C. He has said he will continue to do so until the border is secure.
On Saturday, shelters in a Texas city struggled to find space for migrants who authorities say have abruptly begun crossing by the thousands from Mexico, testing a stretch of the U. S. border that is typically equipped to handle large groups of people fleeing poverty and violence.
The pace of arrivals in Brownsville, Texas appeared to catch the city on the southernmost tip of Texas off guard, stretching social services and putting an overnight shelter in an uncommon position of turning people away.
Officials say more than 15,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have illegally crossed the river near Brownsville since last week.
That is a sharp rise from the 1,700 migrants that Border Patrol agents encountered in the first two weeks of April, according to U. S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
The uptick comes as the Biden administration plans for the end of pandemic-era asylum restrictions. U. S. authorities have said daily illegal crossings from Mexico could climb as high as 13,000 from about 5,200 in March.
Other cities – some far away from the southern U. S. border – are also grappling with suddenly large influxes of migrants.
In Chicago, authorities reported this week a tenfold increase in the arrival of migrants in the city, where as many as 100 migrants have begun arriving daily and begun sheltering in police stations.
‘We are completely tapped out,’ she told CNN This Morning on Monday. ‘We have no more space. No more resources. And frankly, we’re already in a surge. We’ve been seeing over the last week two to three — 200 plus people coming to Chicago every single day.’
Lightfoot stressed that Chicago is a welcoming city, but cannot accommodate the influx of migrants, especially without planning, coordination and cooperation from the Texas governor.
‘Chicago is a Welcoming City and we collaborate with County, State, and community partners to rise to this challenge, but your lack of consideration or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way,’ Lightfoot wrote.
‘Nearly all the migrants have been in dire need of food, water, and clothing and many needed extensive medical care,’ she wrote.
‘Some of the individuals you placed on buses were women in active labor, and some were victims of sexual assault. None of these urgent needs were addressed in Texas. Instead, these individuals and families were packed onto buses and shipped across the country like freight without regard to their personal circumstances.’… (Read more)
