President Joe Biden continues weathering friendly fire from Democratic mayors over the arrival of immigrants in their cities, an issue that now encompasses Chicago as well as New York City and Washington, D.C.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to visit Washington this week to meet with members of the Biden administration about migrants arriving in the Windy City from the U.S.-Mexico border.
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“I’m going to Washington later this week and going to be sitting down with some of the folks to describe for them what the conditions are on the ground here in Chicago but also make sure that federal help is coming,” Lightfoot told reporters at a news conference Tuesday, “not just to Chicago but in all the cities and states that are welcoming … to make sure we have the resources we need.”
But the Biden administration has been impervious to political pressure over the southern border, whether it comes from Republican governors like Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Doug Ducey (R-AZ) or Democratic big city mayors like Lightfoot, Washington’s Muriel Bowser, or New York’s Eric Adams.
The Pentagon has twice rejected pleas from Bowser for the National Guard to help ease an influx of migrants in her city, and the administration has also ignored requests for help from small border cities, including those with Democratic mayors.
“Biden has made the political calculation that he’d rather be beat up by the Right than by the Left,” Heritage Foundation Border Security and Immigration Center Director Lora Ries previously told the Washington Examiner, contrasting Biden with his former boss. “He doesn’t want to be labeled the deporter in chief.”
Since Biden took office, a record-breaking 3 million migrant arrests have been recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Abbott and Ducey made headlines this spring and summer for sending busloads of volunteer migrants to big cities, beginning with Washington before expanding to other major metros. Washington remains by far the largest recipient, absorbing an estimated 7,400 of the 8,900 migrants who have volunteered to take buses. The city is also smaller than New York and Chicago, making the local impact more pronounced.
Chicago received only two busloads before Lightfoot began attacking Abbott, calling him unpatriotic, a racist, and a bad Christian.
Abbott said her ire should be directed at the president rather than at himself.
“Mayor Lightfoot is attacking Texas instead of addressing the real cause of the border crisis: Joe Biden,” he tweeted. “His inaction at our border is putting the lives of Texans at risk & is overwhelming our communities. Texas is doing Biden’s job to secure the border.”
Washington, New York, and Chicago are all “sanctuary cities” that are officially welcoming to migrants.
Bowser has called the migrants arriving via bus “a politically motivated stunt” that could cause a crisis within the nation’s capital and also took the opportunity to push for statehood for the district, which would allow Washington to deploy the National Guard without seeking federal approval.
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So far, the White House continues insisting that resources are available to those who need them.
“The administration has been in regular touch with Mayor Bowser and Mayor Adams,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Aug. 26, the last time she was asked about the issue. “And [Federal Emergency Management Agency] regional administrators have been meeting with both mayors on site to coordinate available federal support from FEMA and other federal agencies.”
Jean-Pierre pointed to FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program as a solution for both Abbott and the mayors.
“We will work to manage the consequences of this latest political charade that we see from [Abbott],” she said. “And we do take this very seriously and are continuing — going to work with Mayor Bowser and Mayor Adams.”
