(The Center Square) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is calling his counterpart in Illinois and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot “hypocritical” for busing illegal immigrants transported to the Windy City by the state of Texas to suburban communities with no warning.
“These Democrat elites are absolute hypocrites, and now their hypocrisy is on full display for the entire nation,” Abbott press secretary Renae Eze said in a statement.
“Governor [J.B.] Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot have been complaining about a few hundred migrants being bused into self-declared sanctuary city Chicago, then turn around and dump them in the suburbs for Republican mayors to deal with.”
With illegal immigration surging at the southern border since President Joe Biden first took office, Abbott started busing migrants to Washington D.C. in April, then New York City this summer and now Chicago to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
As of last week, Texas has sent more than 350 migrants to Chicago and thousands to New York City and Washington, D.C.
Pritzker and Lightfoot have been highly critical of Abbott for not providing them with advance notice that they were arriving, calling the busing initiative inhumane and racist.
“Do the right thing and collaborate and cooperate, instead of us having to guess whether they’re coming or not coming, how many and what are their needs,” Lightfoot said last week. “That is insanity that doesn’t have to happen.”
But Lightfoot and Pritzker then bused the migrants who arrived in Chicago to Burr Ridge and Elk Grove Village without notifying the suburban communities’ leaders that they were coming.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson said, according to ABC 7 Chicago. “So if you’re upset about being blindsided, don’t turn around and blindside these neighboring communities in your state. It’s not right.”
Johnson told ABC 7 that Lightfoot apologized Sunday for not providing notice, but she told him the state was in charge.
Pritzker said Monday that the state contacted hotels across the region and sent the migrants to communities with enough available rooms. Pritzker said state taxpayers are footing the bill for the rooms.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has declared a public health emergency in response to the continued arrival of migrants.
In July alone, Texas saw more than 100,000 people apprehended after crossing the border illegally. These exclude the tens of thousands of foreign nationals who evade law enforcement as they enter Texas illegally in between ports of entry.
The state of Texas has spent billions of dollars over the past two years dealing with the surge in illegal immigration.
