Chico urges City Council to cancel Gary airport pact over deportation issue

Mayoral candidate Gery Chico implored the City Council on Monday to cancel a 1995 agreement that has allowed the Gary/Chicago International Airport to use $24 million from Chicago to improve an airport that is now being used to deport illegal immigrants.

“The [Welcoming City] law today says we don’t use our money and we don’t use our people to enable ICE to deport people for non-felony contact. And that’s exactly what’s happening,” Chico told a City Hall news conference.

“On nearly a weekly basis, this airport uses Chicago money to enable the deportation of immigrants being held in the Broadview detention center. We don’t know whether they’re felons or grandmothers or children…This has to stop.”

Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) said he will introduce an ordinance this month canceling the agreement with the Indiana airport after the required six-months notice.

“Millions of Chicago dollars are going to an airport used to facilitate the racist agenda of the Republican Trump administration. We must bring it to an end,” said Lopez, who has endorsed Chico.

Chico was serving as then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s chief of staff when Daley cut an 11th-hour deal with the Gary airport to stave off the threat of a Republican takeover of Chicago airports.

The 12-member Chicago-Gary Regional Airport Authority was created. The agreement, widely viewed as a political masterstroke at the time, called for Chicago to ship at least $500,000 a year from Chicago’s airport enterprise fund to the Gary airport.

According to Chico, the Gary airport already has received $24 million from Chicago, maybe more, to widen runways and support annual operations “with little description or explanation.”

A recent audit of the Gary airport authority revealed an “overstatement of nearly $700,000” last year “due to poor bookkeeping,” he said.

Chico said the Gary airport pact was supposed to last just three years. It was never intended to drag on ad nauseam.

For that reason alone, he believes the City Council should cancel the deal and use the money to recruit and train people to fill the gravy train of jobs tied to the $8.7 billion expansion of O’Hare Airport.

“People took their eye off the ball. And these things just have a funny way of perpetuating. … They go on in perpetuity,” Chico said.

“It’s time to call the question. Let’s end this thing.”

The weekly deportation that came to light only recently — after Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th) shined the light on it — creates an even greater sense of urgency, he said.

“There’s no reason to be sending one dollar to an entity that assists in the deportation of people, many of whom haven’t committed one crime at all. It could be a broken tail light. It might be nothing,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong. There are some bad people in here. But, until the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency levels with people and puts out accurate statistics, we can’t believe much of what they say.”

Chico said the issue is “personal to me.” When he was growing up, he had a cousin from Mexico who was in Chicago for a visit. He over-stayed his visa by two weeks.

“One day, he was gone. Clothes, suitcase all left in my grandparents’ back room. Fortunately, we caught up with him two months later and he was safe in Mexico,” Chico said.

Chico held forth hours before Burke, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) and State Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) pressed the deportation issue at a City Hall meeting of the Gary-Chicago Airport Authority.

Retiring Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd), for one, was unimpressed.

Munoz branded it a face-saving gesture tailor-made to change the subject from Burke’s controversial decision to spend years handling property tax appeals for the riverfront tower that bears the name of Donald Trump.

“If Burke was really concerned about Latinos he would donate the millions of dollars he got from Trump to the Pilsen-Little Village YMCA,” Munoz said Monday.

Munoz, a political ally of soon-to-be-Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, noted that the Gary-Chicago agreement was forged to prevent “rogue governors like Jim Edgar and today’s [Bruce] Rauner” from taking over our airports.

“Any attempt to undo it would be irresponsible and grandstanding,” Munoz said.

Burke’s office had no immediate comment.

Aviation Department spokesperson Lauren Huffman called the demand to nix the Gary Airport deal “really puzzling,” arguing that it would have “no impact on ICE operations out of the Gary Airport.”

“The federal government decides where these flights operate regardless of the wishes of local municipalities,” Huffman wrote in an email.

“To suggest otherwise misunderstands the federal government’s authority to operate wherever it wishes.”