(The Center Square) – Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker wouldn’t explicitly say Tuesday if the southern U.S. border needs to be closed.
Despite Illinois not being a border state, the weight of non-citizen arrivals is becoming untenable. Pritzker sent President Joe Biden a letter Monday saying taxpayer resources the state has spent on the 15,000 non-citizens transported to Chicago is overwhelming, and the buses keep coming.
“We need reimbursement for those dollars,” Pritzker said. “They promised that. There was a fund to do that but the problem got so big that there wasn’t enough money.”
Illinois taxpayers have already spent more than $330 million on the non-citizen arrivals.
Even though his central Illinois district is far from the border, state Rep. Mike Coffey, R-Springfield, said his constituents’ tax dollars are paying for Illinois’ response, including free health care for non-citizens over 65. Coffey recently traveled to the border and put things into perspective.
“The governor’s complaining about the aid they need, well you have to understand, down there at Eagle Pass, that is a town of 28,000 people and 50,000 illegals invaded in two days,” Coffey told The Center Square. “These are poor counties that don’t have the money, the resources.”
While Pritzker blames Republican leaders in border states for sending migrants “to cause chaos,” Coffey said Illinois should reverse its Pritzker-approved sanctuary state policies of not enforcing federal immigration laws.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told CBS Sunday that they are a welcoming state, but the border “is too open right now.” They’re dealing with 125,000 non-citizen arrivals. Pritzker wouldn’t explicitly say Tuesday whether the border needs to be closed.
“As you know, I’ve been in favor of comprehensive immigration reform which means making sure that we have border security, but also making sure that we’re letting people come into this country,” Pritzker said Monday.
Coffey said it’s more than just an immigration crisis; it’s a drug, cartel and human trafficking crisis. He said the border needs to be secured now before anything else.
“After you secure the border, then you can start to talk about the different avenues and things that you want to do but nothing can be talked about until after the border is secure,” Coffey said.
Since October 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported more than 2.8 million encounters along the Southwest border, more than four times the total in 2020.
