This Midwestern progressive has only been in office for 15 months, and he’s already deluged with criticism over his handling of an influx of asylum seekers.
For many in Illinois and further afield, Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson got off to a terrible start.
This week, he’s been ranked as America’s ‘worst sanctuary mayor’ by a migration watchdog.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) says Johnson lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on migrants while his own voters languish in poverty.
He’s followed in the ranking by New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams and his counterpart from Denver, Michael Johnston.
The IRLI says sanctuary city policies are a ‘magnet’ that encourage foreigners to hop across the US-Mexico border
Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson is battling fierce criticism after just 15 months on the job
The rest of the pack are Democratic mayors who embrace ‘sanctuary’ policies.
That means they treat non-legal migrants comparably to US citizens, and don’t work with federal agencies to have them deported.
The scorecard comes as fears of migration drives voters in the 2024 election, after record-breaking people flows across the southern border.
Republicans blame the Biden administration for letting asylum seekers pour in from Mexico, but IRLI’s director Dale Wilcox says progressive mayors must shoulder some of the blame.
The open-arms approach of Johnson, Adams, and other mayors is one of the ‘biggest magnets drawing illegal aliens into this country,’ says Wilcox.
‘While they claim to be more compassionate than their critics, the policies of these mayors are actually causing unacceptable levels of overcrowding, criminal activity and death in their communities,’ he adds.
Studies have shown immigrants, including those in the US illegally, do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
Johnson won a surprise election victory last year as the insurgent progressive who pushed out incumbent Lori Lightfoot.
But he’s floundered since taking over City Hall, with his plans to raise taxes and combat homelessness thwarted.
He’s struggled against flows of asylum seekers, who have swamped shelters and bedded down in police stations and at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
In April, he asked the city council to stump an extra $70 million to house the tens of thousands of newcomers.
But his new migrant shelters quickly came under fire from residents.
They said the arrivals were getting a better deal than hard-up locals, who faced evictions and sleeping on the streets.
The sight of migrants living at Chicago police stations put a spotlight on how Mayor Johnson was handling the crisis
In one viral video, a black Chicago woman slammed Johnson for payouts to migrants while the African-Americans who elected him went hungry.
‘I don’t understand how they can give these immigrants thousands of dollars in the state of Illinois, but look what they’re doing to our own f******g people,’ said the woman.
She described seeing ‘Latinos’ arriving in her neighborhood in a ’12-foot box truck,’ using government welfare checks to ‘buy up everything’ and effectively price black residents out of the neighborhood.
‘The fact they are here, and our government is giving more to them than to the people who were born here, is really starting to p**s us off,’ added the woman.
‘Mayor Brandon, we are coming for your a**.’
The former schoolteacher has also made some bizarre gaffes.
After a spate of brutal gun violence over the Independence Day weekend, Johnson appeared to blame former president Richard Nixon for the carnage.
In a press conference about the more than 100 people who were shot in Chicago, 19 of them fatally, Johnson turned back the clock by six decades.
‘Black death has been unfortunately been accepted in this country for a very long time,’ he told reporters, in comments that were widely panned.
We had a chance 60 years ago to get at the root causes. And people mocked President [Lyndon] Johnson, and we ended up with Richard Nixon.’
Despite high hopes at his inauguration, Johnson’s popularity has tanked.
In an April poll, just 9 percent of Chicagoans rated him as doing an ‘above average’ job.
This all cast a cloud over Chicago’s hosting of the Democratic National Convention, from Monday through Thursday.
His office did not answer The Mail’s request for a comment.
The other mayors on the list have also struggled with the record-breaking inflows of migrants.
Adams, of New York, openly acknowledged that the influx of 110,000 asylum seekers from the southern border threatened to ‘destroy’ his city.
Recent data show the Big Apple has already spent an eye-popping $5 billion on services for migrants — including nearly $2 billion on housing alone.
Though Adams has tried to roll back some sanctuary policies, the IRLI calls his steps ‘far too little, far too late.’
New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams famously acknowledged asylum seekers from the southern border threatened to ‘destroy’ his city.
Eric Adams came second on the list for doing ‘far too little, far too late’ to curb people flows
‘The lawlessness of sanctuary cities and their mayors is destroying some of our greatest cities, and that has to stop,’ added Tom Homan, an IRLI fellow and former immigration enforcement officer.
Immigration has emerged as a top issue for voters ahead of the November 5 presidential election pitting Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, against Republican former President Donald Trump.
Hundreds of migrants from around a dozen countries left from Mexico’s southern border on foot late last month, in a bid to become the latest so-called ‘caravan’ to make it to the US border.
Some members of the group said they hoped to reach the frontier before the election, as they feared a Trump win would see him follow through on pledges to shutter the border to asylum-seekers.
Still, the number of migrants unlawfully crossing the US southern border continued to drop in July — the fifth consecutive month to see fewer migrant apprehensions, official figures showed.
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Publish date : 2024-08-14 05:52:00
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