Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson invoked the Confederacy on Sunday when complaining about Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott sending migrants to the Windy City.
Migrants who are transported to Chicago do not get the same health services as they would at the border, Johnson said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” though he acknowledged the process at the U.S.-Mexico divide is “absolutely raggedy and reckless.”
“But we cannot have a governor who decides that he’s going to cling to the vestiges of [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis, when we should be pulling to the hopes and aspirations that were left by [black abolitionist] Frederick Douglass,” said Johnson. “We have to have a coordinated response to this humanitarian crisis. We cannot allow chaos to dictate and to divide this country.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) on Gov. @GregAbbott_TX sending illegal immigrants to blue sanctuary cities: "We cannot have a governor who decides that he's going to cling to the vestiges of Jefferson Davis" pic.twitter.com/0LHDXapqMe
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 31, 2023
As part of “Operation Lone Star,” Abbott has sought to draw attention to the issue to the rest of the nation by relocating migrants to blue cities around the country on buses and flights. Texas sent its first plane carrying 120 people to Chicago last week.
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“Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” his office said in a statement on Friday.
With more than 20,000 migrants arriving in Chicago since last year, Johnson has sounded the alarm about the struggle to take care of so many people as have mayors in other big cities such as New York and Washington, D.C.
“This is unsustainable. None of our local economies are positioned to be able to carry on such a mission. And what we have attempted to do is to create structure and some coordination around this humanitarian crisis,” Johnson said.
The mayor accused Abbott of being “determined to continue to sow seeds of chaos” with buses that he said lack “any coordination” with local officials and the “very dangerous task” of placing migrants on airplanes.
“This is certainly a matter of — not just of our national security, but it’s the type of chaos that this governor is committed to administering,” he added.