Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago dismissed a reporter’s question Tuesday about a sex offender in the city arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during an illegal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.
ICE arrested and deported hundreds of illegal aliens charged with crimes after President Donald Trump signed multiple executive orders to strengthen immigration enforcement and rescinded orders issued by former-President Joe Biden in 2021 that reversed policies Trump put in place during his first term. Johnson, who has criticized the ICE operations, argued it wasn’t city officials’ job to arrest the sex offender.
“Tom Homan showed up in Chicago and within 24 hours found a convicted sex offender who has been living in our city since 2009, flouting the sex offender registry. If he can do this, why can’t you?” the reporter asked Johnson.
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“Because that’s their job,” Johnson said. “That is their job. The federal government has a responsibility to make sure that individuals who are undocumented who have been charged with, convicted of, a crime, it is the federal government’s responsibility to do their part to uphold the law. Our local police department, along with our public health department, along with our other sister agencies are working to build a better, stronger, safer Chicago, and as we’ve stated repeatedly, those critical investments, continue to see the results of those investment as violent crime continues to fall in Chicago.”
While violent crime in Chicago decreased in 2024, it remained above 2019 through 2022 levels, according to the University of Chicago. Aggravated assault and aggravated battery increased from 2023 to 2024.
State and city officials have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to provide housing, clothes and food to more than 35,000 migrants who were transported to the Windy City from border states, Fox News reported in February.
Black residents in Chicago protested and took legal action against the city’s proposed use of a closed-down high school and two other locations on the South Side of the city as migrant shelters in 2023, according to ABC 7 Chicago. Many resident have expressed outrage that the illegal migrants have taken city resources away from communities in need.
Many illegal immigrants have made their way to cities like Chicago and New York City, some of whom have been bussed or flown to those cities by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas. Abbott began busing migrants to so-called “sanctuary” cities in 2022 along with then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona.
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