Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday sent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a sweeping letter about the ongoing migrant crisis, urging him to stop dropoffs during a dangerous winter storm.
“While action is pending at the federal level, I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves,” Pritzker said in the letter. “Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives, suspend your transports and do not send more people to our state.”
Pritzker wrote that sending migrants to Chicago this weekend — when temperatures are expected to reach dangerously low temperatures after several inches of snowfall — will potentially cost lives.
“Your callousness, sending buses and planes full of migrants in this weather, is now life-threatening to every one of the arrivals,” Pritzker wrote. “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.”
According to the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, Chicago has received an estimated 34,562 migrants since the dropoffs began. That includes 4,468 people who have arrived on daily flights to O’Hare and Midway international airports since June 2023.
One bus was expected to be dropped off in the Chicagoland area on Friday, the city said. There are also 408 migrants awaiting placement — with 14,574 people in 28 active shelters.
Pritzker’s strongly worded letter accuses Abbott of having “no interest in working on bipartisan solutions to the border crisis because that would put an end to your cruel political game.”
Chicago’s “landing zone” became a temporary shelter for migrants in late December after the city stopped housing them at police stations. As of Monday, it was housing more than 500 people in buses, including over 100 children, as the number of people arriving has outpaced the city’s ability to place them in shelters.
The state on Wednesday opened a new shelter in the Little Village neighborhood, which can accept 220 people.
The influx of migrants — more than 30,000 sent to Chicago from Texas — has also impacted the suburbs, where several communities have enacted ordinances to prohibit bus dropoffs.
Pritzker on Wednesday said the state is trying to prevent companies from leasing their planes to the state of Texas. He said he believes the state has deployed a strategy that is deterring the plane dropoffs. The state has been in contact with airport officials across the state to warn them of the flights, which may be contributing to them ceasing.
“We’re trying to prevent those companies from leasing their planes to the state of Texas. You can’t, in general, you can’t tell a group a people or an aircraft that it can’t come somewhere,” Pritzker said. “On the other hand, there are lots of things that I think would be a significant deterrent and they already are working.”
Last year, the state tried coordinating with bus operators and organizations at the border to try to gauge the timing of dropoffs. Results of that effort were mixed.
An Abbott spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
