In an about-face, Mayor Brandon Johnson is now asking aldermen to approve using another $70 million in city funds to maintain this year’s migrant response.
This week, the mayor’s office began briefing City Council members on plans to push through the item as a means to keep afloat the city’s costly response to the 38,000-plus asylum seekers who have made their way to Chicago since 2022.
The mayor’s office declined to comment Wednesday, but sources familiar with the briefings said his team hopes to allocate the $70 million from previous city surpluses, similar to a budgetary trick his predecessor Lori Lightfoot introduced on her way out the mayor’s office last year.
If approved by City Council, the $70 million would augment $150 million already set aside in his 2024 budget for the migrant response.
That’s an amount he has long acknowledged would be inadequate, but the mayor has also said it’s not incumbent on the city to shoulder so much of the burden.
In February, state, county and city officials projected about $321 million would be needed to sustain the city’s migrant operation through the end of the year.
The state and county pledged about $250 million of that, leaving a $70 million hole sources said Johnson initially agreed to provide before backing off.
Johnson bristled at that characterization at the time and told reporters: “There are a number of matters that need to be worked through.
No one in the state of Illinois, in this country, is questioning Mayor Brandon Johnson’s commitment to this mission.”
