The Chicago City Council has approved spending an extra $70 million of taxpayer money on the city's illegal immigrant situation despite residents of Chicago expressing their disapproval of the request at a city council meeting on Wednesday.
The mayor's request was approved with a 30-18 vote.
The city council's budget committee had already approved the taxpayer spending, which would be used to provide food, shelter, and various other services to illegal immigrants currently living in the city, according to Chicago Local 12. However, the measure still needed the city council's approval.
Many residents who spoke at the council meeting on Wednesday argued suggested that the money should be used to benefit their own neighborhoods and communities, while others threatened that the aldermen would lose votes if they approved the spending.
One resident told the aldermen, per Fox News, “Vote for the money for these immigrants today, and we are coming for those seats, you can believe that.”
“You better be worrying about your job, you better be worrying about your longevity, because we gonna vote and we gonna getcha out, ’cause you ain’t doing right by us, that’s what time it is,” the resident added.
Some residents threatened to have Mayor Brandon Johnson recalled over the issue.
The city council delayed the vote until Friday, when they met again and then approved the $70 million request after more than an hour of heated debate. The funds, which will be drawn from the city’s budget reserves, are in addition to the $300 million in taxpayer dollars the City of Chicago has already reportedly spent on housing, food, and healthcare for the illegal immigrants.
The city council also unanimously approved $48 million in federal and state grant money to pay for staffing and shelter costs related to the migrant crisis.
The county stepped in to assist the city with funds to care for illegal immigrants. On Thursday, the Cook County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a measure giving the City of Chicago $70 million, which will be used for food for illegal immigrants.
Some board members called for more oversight of how the money is spent.
“Once this $70 million is let, we have no oversight whatsoever,” Commissioner Sean Morrison during the meeting, per the Chicago Sun-Times.
“If it’s misspent or not allocated right or allocated with a special interest involved or whatever the case might be in the future, we’re the ones that made that occur,” Morrison added.
Tanya Anthony, the Cook County chief financial officer, told the board that the funds would be well managed and the county would require invoices before reimbursing the city for expenses.
“If the city does something with the funds we don’t like, we won’t reimburse them,” Anthony said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
More than 39,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the city since August of 2022, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.
This large funding comes as the U.S. continues to deal with a crisis along the southern border due to the high number of migrants crossing unlawfully, prompting many states and cities to take action to account for the new arrivals.
The City of Denver recently announced that it is allocating about $89.9 million to help handle the crisis within its city. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, various city agencies will have decreased budgets because they have to fund programs for illegal migrants.
The number of illegal migrants crossing into the country from the Mexico-U.S. border is astonishing, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting more than 7.9 million encounters with illegal migrants since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
