CHICAGO — As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been touting an initiative transporting migrants at the Texas-Mexico border to areas such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, local mayors are now airing their grievances.
According to a report from WGN in Chicago, Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso says there has been no coordination between him and the Texas governor.
WGN reports that a bus carrying 75 migrants arrived in Chicago on Wednesday. Several dozen of them have been sent to a hotel in the Chicago suburb without warning to Grasso.
“I am concerned neither the village administrator nor I were told about this,” Grasso told WGN. “We want to know: Why Burr Ridge?”
Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has also expressed concern.
“My frustration comes from the actions of the governor of Texas,” Lightfoot said Sunday, when the first bus carrying 50 migrants arrived. “There could be a level of coordination and cooperation, but he chooses to do none of those things and instead tries to send human beings — not cargo, not freight — human beings across the country to an uncertain destination.”
She noted that her office has received no communication from Texas as far as collaboration on the efforts.
"We have yet to hear from anybody in an official capacity from Texas. That's unacceptable," Lightfoot said in a statement. "I think the decent, human thing to do is to cooperate and collaborate. Do the right thing and collaborate and cooperate instead of us having to guess, are they coming, are they not coming, how many, what are their needs?"
According to WGN, multiple Democratic politicians, including Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have stated they would welcome the migrants and provide numerous services to help them. However, Pritzker has criticized the Texas governor's actions as well.
“What the governor of Texas is doing is disgusting and it needs to stop,” Pritzker said. “It shouldn’t be that the governor of Texas is taking these people and treating them like cattle, treating them like property, putting them on busses and sending them wherever he wants to send them.”
Since April, when Abbott announced the bus plan, around 8,000 to 9,000 migrants have reportedly been sent out of the state. Abbott's office that these individuals are only being transported with their written permission.
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