By: Ashmar Mandou
Mayor Brandon Johnson appeared before the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to defend Chicago’s protections for undocumented immigrants, expressing that the Welcoming City ordinance makes all Chicagoans safer. “Every violent crime is devastating, but scapegoating entire communities is not only misleading, it is unjust, and it is beneath us,” Johnson said during his opening statement. “Any action that amplify fears of deportations makes Chicago more dangerous.” Johnson recurrently expressed that Chicago’s crime rate has dropped since he took office 21 months ago, even as the city struggled to care for more than 51,000 people, many fleeing violence and economic collapse in Venezuela, arrived in Chicago, most on buses paid for by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.
“As Mayor of Chicago, nothing is more important to me than the safety and wellbeing of all our residents. Since I was elected, my administration has been laser-focused on creating and implementing public safety initiatives that protect all Chicagoans. We launched the People’s Plan for Community Safety, which builds trust between communities and law enforcement by prioritizing transparency and violence intervention. We established a dedicated robbery task force that reduced robberies by 25 percent citywide. We’ve added over 200 detectives, increasing the clearance rates on our cases. And we’ve updated police equipment and technology so that our police officers have the tools they need to effectively prevent and fight crime,” said Mayor Johnson.
In a fiery exchange among Mayor Johnson and Republican Committeemen including U.S. Representative James Comer (R-Kentucky), who took aim at Chicago, accusing police of refusing to turn over an undocumented man arrested for attempting to lure a child to federal immigration agents. Johnson responded, “Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance is designed to ensure that all Chicago residents, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, can obtain city services, including police protection and medical care.”
The Welcoming City Ordinance passed in 2012 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, which builds on an existing ordinance and longtime City policy that prohibits agencies from inquiring about the immigration status of people seeking City services, and provides that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) will not question crime victims, witnesses and other law-abiding residents about their legal status. Upon listening to all four mayors, U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna stated that she intends to “criminally refer them to Department of /Justice for investigation. “I am not doing that in an effort to bully you guys, but I do believe your policies are hurting the American people.” Johnson testified alongside Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The number of migrants who have arrived in Chicago nears 50,000 and according to the non-partisan organization Illinois Policy, Chicago spent nearly $300 million on the migrant crisis since 2022.
