(Headline USA) Chicago police arrested more than 1,000 Venezuelan illegal immigrants during the first three months of 2024, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Data from the Chicago Police Department showed 609 arrests were for driving/traffic offenses, 75 for violent misdemeanors, 313 for other nonviolent offenses, nine listed as unknown or not listed, and nine for violent felonies. The data did not include illegal juveniles.
The Tribune claimed that the numbers disproved the notion of a “migrant crime wave” since the bulk of arrests made were for nonviolent crimes—although there have been several high-profile fatalities involving illegals who killed innocent people, including young children, while driving without a valid license.
“It’s certainly not a violent crime wave,” Graham Ousey, a Democrat donor and criminologist at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, told the outlet. “It is the impact of people who are deprived of resources.”
But that justification has not sat well with many Chicagoans, who have become increasingly frustrated with the city expending its resources on illegal immigrants.
“We’re simply not enforcing quality-of-life laws around our shelters,” City Council member Raymond Lopez said. “Politically, we have an environment that is making excuses for those low-level offenses as something that should be forgiven or ignored without realizing that it has a very real snowball effect in our neighborhoods.”
Lopez also pointed out that the data from the Chicago Police Department only reflected the crimes reported. Plenty of his residents, he explained, have stopped bothering to report incidents of immigrant crime at all.
Lopez was one of several Chicago leaders who have railed against the city for spending millions of dollars on illegal immigrants while ignoring problems plaguing the city’s legal residents.
“We are not taking care of our own,” said Chris Taliaferro, who represents the city’s 29th Ward, during a recent council meeting. “We have all but forgotten the residents on the West Side and South Side.”
The Chicago City Council recently voted 30-18 to approve a request made by Mayor Brandon Johnson for an additional $70 million in order to help deal with the ongoing immigration crisis. That money is on top of a $150 million in the budget already allotted to caring for illegals.
Despite bitter criticism and fingerpointing that extended both to the Biden administration and to rival Republican officials—who have no influence whatsoever in state or local politics—Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson approved a plan last fall to give illegals $9,000 each in assistance while seeking appropriate work and shelter, on top of their other welfare benefits.
