() The mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Denver—all either known as or explicitly declaring themselves as “sanctuary cities” that minimize cooperation with federal immigration officials—issued a letter requesting to meet with President Joe Biden to ask for $5 billion to fund “overwhelming” migrant inflows.
Biden has already requested $1.4 billion in emergency supplemental funding, but without additional funding the cities will need to “cut essential city services,” the mayors whined.
“To address this crisis without further delay, we are requesting an urgent meeting with you to directly discuss ways we can work with your administration to avoid large numbers of additional asylum seekers being brought to our cities with little to no coordination, support, or resources,” they wrote in their letter.
In fairness, some of them—most notably New York Mayor Eric Adams—have come to repudiate the city’s former sanctuary status, which was a major political talking point as they sought to use civil disobedience to flout the Trump administration and prevent the Republican leader from succeeding in one of his signature agenda items.
Upon assuming office, one of Biden’s first acts was to roll back any of Trump’s standing executive orders related to border security and open the floodgates for the gathering hordes. The 10 million illegals who have entered the country on his watch exceed the populations of all but the nine largest states.
According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, more than 600,000 individuals entered the United States in fiscal year 2023 without being intercepted by U.S. Border Patrol. He said another 900,000 were intercepted or turned themselves in, seeking eligibility to enter under humanitarian parole and pursue asylum applications.
Mayorkas’s estimate was substantially lower than data first reported by the Center Square of nearly 770,000 gotaways along the southwest border alone in fiscal 2023. The total estimate is expected to be closer to a million. There were at least 4 million illegal border crossers in fiscal 2023, the highest in U.S. history.
The “sanctuary city” signatories noted that Denver was spending $2 million per week on migrant shelter, New York City has spent $1.7 billion, and Chicago has spent over $320 million.
New York City, which has faced the brunt of the arrivals, may soon be facing reductions in state funding that offset 30% of migrant-related costs as Gov. Kathy Hochul seeks to close a $4.3 billion budget shortfall.
Chicago faces a budget gap of $538 million, almost half of which is from migrant spending. Despite its shortfall, it recently settled on a plan to offer illegals $9,000 in payouts to assist with their resettlement needs, which undoubtedly will drive up the rent costs for the city’s other residents who are struggling to make ends meet.
Despite the fact that its streets are lined with homeless individuals lured by it lenient drug laws, Denver recently reduced guaranteed shelter for migrants to 37 days for families and 14 days for individuals due to further resource strain.
Los Angeles, meanwhile, has not faced a similar level of influx because, as the New York Times reports, the city “no longer attracts as many immigrants as it once did” due to the cost of living and other quality-of-life and opportunity challenges.
