Johnson joins mayors of NY, Denver to call for migrant help: ‘This is not something that should break our country’

Mayor Brandon Johnson and the mayors of New York City and Denver — the cities most impacted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to ship migrants away from the border — got together Wednesday to call on the federal government for help.

Combined, the three cities have received hundreds of thousands of new arrivals since Abbott began sending migrants and refugees to cities with Democratic mayors and, as the number of people crossing the border spikes, they warned they are at the breaking point.

“We have reached a critical point in this mission absent real, significant intervention immediately,” said Johnson, who was joined by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

“Our local economies are not designed to respond to this kind of crisis,” Johnson said. “This is not something that should break our country.”

The trio called for financial aid, expanded access to work authorizations and a federal system to better move migrants around the country, instead of Abbott’s “games and use of migrants as political pawns,” Adams said.

The issue of local governments being able to receive and provide for migrants came to a head 10 days ago, after a 5-year-old migrant child at shelter where many have complained of unsanitary conditions fell ill and died.

Abbott began bussing migrants out of his state in 2022 in response to President Joe Biden’s move to end Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed for migrants crossing the border to quickly be returned to Mexico.

Abbott announced the first buses coming to New York City in early August 2022. The first buses arrived in Chicago at the end of that August.

Denver hasn’t sheltered tens of thousands of migrants like Chicago or New York, but it’s been heavily impacted by becoming the transportation hub for migrants moving elsewhere, Johnston said.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

Earlier Wednesday, Johnson had been on CNN calling for federal assistance after Abbott began skirting Chicago’s recent bus ordinance by dropping off migrants outside of the city and sending them via charter plane.

On CNN, Johnson didn’t directly address questions about the recent death of Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, although he previously blamed Abbott for sending “sick” migrants.

Health care providers treating migrants have instead attributed the rise in illnesses at the shelter where 5-year-old was staying to conditions there.

Denver is writing rules for a similar bus policy and New York enacted one Wednesday, in solidarity with Chicago, Adams said.

The number of migrants arriving in cities has largely corresponded to the number crossing the border, and due to a recent spike, Adams warned New York was on track to receive 16,000 migrants monthly and was already at the “breaking point.”

“We cannot continue to do the federal government’s job,” Adams said. “We need action and we need it now.”

This isn’t the first time leaders on the receiving end of Abbott’s buses have called for help.

In October, Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called on the federal government to intervene.

About a month later, Biden announced a sped-up work permit program that has resulted in some migrants in Chicago getting their authorization within weeks of filing, according to program administrators.

Johnston of Denver, however, said they were asking instead for migrants to be given authorizations before even arriving, that way “we can help them do what they want to do, which is work.”

The federal government granting any one of those asks would make a significant difference, the trio said.

“If all three of those fail, we’ll have to dramatically look at reducing city services,” Johnston said. “Those are the hard scenarios we think we and other cities would face.”

Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times