CV NEWS FEED // Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker became the latest high-profile blue state Democrat to criticize President Joe Biden’s inaction on the intensifying border crisis.
“Not enough has been done, there’s no doubt about that,” Pritzker stated during a Sunday ABC News interview. “I think that the president needs to do more. The Congress needs to do more.”
This is not the first time the governor has taken aim at the president, as Pritzker’s state continues to suffer the consequences of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies.
POLITICO reported in November that “Pritzker met with President Joe Biden for 45 minutes … and a big part of their conversation was about the migrant crisis.”
“[Pritzker] lobbied the president for humanitarian aid and expedited work permits for asylum seekers not covered by Biden’s ‘temporary protected status’ actions,” POLITICO continued. “The governor also addressed the need for federal coordination to protect asylum seekers from Chicago winter.”
One month earlier, Pritzker called for more financial support from the president.
“Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government,” Pritzker said at the time:
We ask that the White House and the Administration continue to look for ways to ‘cut the red tape’ and speed up the work authorization process by all means necessary, including instituting a mass blanket fee waiver.
>> FORMER CBP CHIEF: ‘WHAT’S CHRISTIAN’ ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES? <<
Earlier in his gubernatorial tenure, the Democrat embraced the same lenient “open border” policies advocated for by those on the farthest-left fringes of his party.
Back in 2021, Pritzker signed four pro-immigration bills, as well as an executive order instituting the “Welcoming Illinois Office.”
As a press release from the state government noted at the time, the legislation served to
strengthen the TRUST Act and make Illinois the second state in the nation to require local officials to end partnerships with ICE, address hate crimes against immigrant communities, expand workplace protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, and create the Illinois Immigration Impact Task Force to ensure state programs and policies best serve immigrant residents.
“Throughout my governorship I’ve directed my administration to adopt policies that make Illinois a welcoming state for immigrants, and I’m proud to sign these accountability measures into law to advance our cause,” Pritzker stated after signing the package:
Every family, every child, every human being deserves to feel safe and secure in the place they call home. I am committed to making sure that value defines what it means to live in Illinois.
>> TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD TAKES BORDER PARK <<
During his ABC News appearance this week, Pritzker also blamed Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for sending migrants to Illinois and other “sanctuary jurisdictions” as part of Operation Lone Star, the Republican state administration’s three-year-long border security effort.
“We have migrants that arrive from Texas virtually every day, hundreds, and we don’t have places to put them,” Pritzker said. “We don’t have enough shelter space here.”
“There are plenty of other cities where, you know, if he’s going to send people, they could be sent, but no,” he went on. “He’s choosing only Democratic states, Democratic cities.”
Abbott wrote on X (formerly Twitter) a month ago: “Democrats in Chicago & New York are waking up to the reality that open border policies are failed policies.”
“Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities to relieve our overwhelmed border towns,” he added. “We’ll continue to do so until Biden secures the border.”
The Illinois governor is not the first blue-state Democratic politician to change his tune on immigration after seeing the current crisis hit close to home.
Within Pritzker’s own state, far-left Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently criticized Biden’s lack of action on the border as well.
“It’s the entire country that is now at stake,” Johnson said during a CNN appearance last month. He proceeded to ask Biden for significantly more “resources” for Chicago and the rest of the country to handle the crisis.
As CatholicVote reported at the time, “Johnson has repeatedly supported maintaining Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city.”
The city of Chicago accounts for just over 20% of Illinois’ population.
In October 2023, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said that her state – which has a “Right to Shelter” mandate – could no longer house any more migrants.
CatholicVote noted that in 2017, then-Massachusetts Attorney General Healey “rebuked the [Trump administration] over its decision to withdraw federal funding to ‘sanctuary cities.’”
>> DEM NEW YORK GOVERNOR: ‘CONGRESS NEEDS TO PUT MORE CONTROLS AT THE BORDER’ <<
During a CBS interview the same month, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said the U.S. Mexico-Border “is too open right now” and endorsed a border security law at the federal level.
“People coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum, and the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York, and that is a real problem for New York City,” she continued, referring to the city’s intensifying migrant crisis.
Despite these comments, Hochul held firm on her decision to maintain New York’s status as a “sanctuary state.”
Her remarks came less than a month after New York City Mayor Eric Adams went on record at a town hall meeting stating that the immigration issue “will destroy New York City.”
“I don’t see an ending to this,” Adams said. “We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month … people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they gonna come through the southern part of the border and coming to New York City.”
Less than two years earlier, then-mayoral candidate Adams promised to keep New York City a “sanctuary city.”
The mayor has since emerged as perhaps Biden’s most outspoken critic on the issue from within the Democratic Party.
