Several Chicago suburbs vote to limit unscheduled migrant bus drop-offs from Texas

CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 1/3/2024, 11:03 a.m.
A migrant surge continues to overwhelm authorities at the US-Mexico border — and in US cities where many asylum-seekers are …
The Joliet City Council meets Tuesday. Mandatory Credit: City of Joliet

Originally Published: 03 JAN 24 11:42 ET

By Alisha Ebrahimji, Melissa Alonso and Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — A migrant surge continues to overwhelm authorities at the US-Mexico border — and in US cities where many asylum-seekers are being sent.

Here are the latest developments:

Leaders of several Chicago suburbs have voted to restrict buses from dropping off migrants without notice in their municipalities while officials in New Jersey are trying to figure out how to deal with buses using transit points in their state to evade new rules aimed at curbing the influx of arrivals in New York City.

Frustrated by “rogue buses” from Texas dropping off migrants by the thousands, the mayors of New York and Chicago, along with Denver, have tried to slow the surge by requiring bus operators to coordinate arrivals under the threat of impound, fines and even jail time through executive orders.

But in the week since New York’s executive order began limiting when and where migrants can be dropped off, as well as requiring advance written notice of asylum-seekers’ arrival, “not one bus from Texas has complied,” New York Mayor Eric Adams’ chief counsel Lisa Zornberg said Tuesday.

Now, suburbs of New York and Chicago are seeing migrants dropped off in their communities – and stretching their resources thin.

At the direction of Texas’ Republican governor, the Lone Star state since April 2022 has bused over 90,000 migrants to “sanctuary cities” run by Democrats, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Los Angeles and Washington, DC, according to numbers released Friday by Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.

Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border in December alone, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN.

“We anticipate the encounter numbers on the border will continue to fluctuate,” a senior Biden administration official said. “We have seen over the last year, periods of increased encounters and periods of decreased encounters.”

Chicago suburbs pass their own ordinances

Lawmakers in Chicago suburbs in recent days have approved new laws similar to the busing ordinance in the nation’s third-most-populous city that aims to streamline migrant drop-offs and stop buses from leaving new arrivals “in the middle of traffic, on random street corners and at O’Hare International Airport,” Chicago officials have said.

Texas has sent over 28,000 asylum-seekers to Chicago since August 2022, according to Friday numbers from Abbott’s office.

“This was a tough one, because we don’t want to look like we don’t care, but we have to move forward and get a handle on all of this,” Councilperson Jan Quillman of Joliet said of the ordinance in her city that passed unanimously.

Three days before Christmas, the village of Hinsdale “began receiving unannounced busloads of migrants from Texas who were being dropped off at or near Hinsdale’s main train station so that they could take the train from Hinsdale to Chicago,” Village Board President Thomas Cauley Jr. said Tuesday, the same day lawmakers there unanimously approved restricting bus activity.

Suburban communities that have already adopted such measures have seen success preventing migrant buses from using their towns as transfer points, he added. “The inflow of busloads of migrants to those suburbs have stopped,” Cauley said. “The buses then go to suburbs that do not have ordinances.”

Most of the measures passed by Chicago suburbs require five days advance notice for “unscheduled intercity bus service” carrying people one way.

In Hinsdale, the penalty for violating the ordinance is a $750 fine for each passenger, and buses could be seized and impounded. The community of Wilmington, south of Chicago, passed a similar ordinance Tuesday, said its mayor, Ben Dietz.

Though leaders of Chicago suburbs have said there have been no known public safety incidents related to the arrival of migrants at their train stations, Joliet officials encouraged residents to report any buses they think may be dropping off migrants.

“If anyone sees a bus that looks like it could be doing that, we’d urge you to call 911,” Joliet Mayor Terry D’Arcy said during Tuesday’s meeting. “Our dispatchers are well aware of how to handle the situation.”