A black resident of Chicago was filmed berating Mayor Brandon Johnson over the city’s current ‘sanctuary’ status for migrants and the progressive’s failure to bring funds to more at-risk communities.
The exchange was recorded at the Chicago City Council’s special meeting Thursday, called to consider whether residents should vote on a referendum on the city’s sanctuary status for the upcoming year.
The meeting was thus filled with debate, and drew a fierce statement from a woman who billed herself as a Chicago native born and bred, Lauren Lawrence,
Speaking as Johnson stood at his podium, Lawrence lamented how she and others have witnessed a ‘transition’ that left citizens in the lurch, almost ‘as if a lot of people are not important here.’
She said: ‘I’m not against anyone coming in here legally. I want to say that clearly. But for those who have not, they don’t top us. They don’t go before us. We’re not last in line.’
The heated interaction comes months after the city spent nearly $1million to build a migrant camp that was suddenly scrapped a few weeks ago, and as more than 25,000 migrants have entered the city since last year.
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A Chicago resident was filmed berating Mayor Brandon Johnson over the city’s current ‘sanctuary’ status for migrants, and the politicians’ failure to bring funds to inner city communities
Speaking as Johnson stood at attention at his podium, Lawrence lamented how she has witnessed a ‘transition’ that has left citizens in the lurch – ‘as if a lot of people are not important here’
‘I’m not for the sanctuary city,’ Lawrence said, before tearing into the relatively new mayor following a disastrous four years of Lori Lightfoot.
‘And the reason why I’m not for the sanctuary city,’ she continued, ‘is because people have waited years to come in here legally.’
Citing the mass of arrivals and the more than 13,000 migrants currently embroiled in Chicago’s shelter system, she proceeded to pan city officials for continuing where Lightfoot left off.
‘Not just transported on these buses, dropped off in our neighborhood,’ she said of asylum seekers being brought into Illinois’ biggest city by the bus load.
Citing the city’s recent rise in crime, she claims to have ‘almost got hit several times just making it down [to the meeting] today.
‘This is ludicrous,’ she continued, before pointing to a supposed double standard spawned by the city’s current migrants crisis, which has cost taxpayers $250million this year alone.
‘There should not be two sets of laws.’
Lawrence proceeded to turn her attention to Chicago’s notorious inner city, which she said has been particularly hit hard by the city’s sanctuary status.
She claimed Johnson – who was brought up in a suburb of Cook County and spent the past four years as its commissioner – had let down these predominantly black communities by continuing Lightfoot’s guidance.
‘I’m not for the sanctuary city,’ she began, before tearing into the relatively new mayor voted in in May, following a disastrous four years of Lori Lightfoot – seen with Johnson in May when he succeeded her
The exchange comes after the city spent nearly $1million to build a migrant camp that was scrapped this month, and as more than 26,000 migrants have entered Chicago since last year
The plan was only called off on December 5, despite previous warnings that the site was not safe due to after toxic chemicals and heavy metals being found onsite
‘The West Side and the South Side Black communities have been earmarked for having funds – never seen it,’ Lawrence said of what she billed as a misallocation of city money.
‘We’re still waiting those funds to come into those communities.’
She then turned her attention to Johnson, who after emerging out of the gate as an unknown in a mass of competitive candidates this year, raised eyebrows with a lofty plan to reallocate law enforcement funds to other services like housing and education.
“Brandon Johnson, many people stood behind you,’ Lawrence began, not long before an angry crowd brought an end to the Rules Committee meeting originally called to get citizens’ takes on the migrant situation.
‘They feel let down, because the day you came into office, which I believe was May 15, you already had signed an executive order,’ she continued, citing a Day One Johnson order that established a ‘deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights.’
The guidance instructs all city officials to take direction from the first ever migrant mayor Beatriz Ponce De León ‘to ensure the efficacy of Chicago’s status as a welcoming and sanctuary city.’
Citing the mass of arrivals and the more than 13,000 migrants currently embroiled in Chicago’s shelter system, she proceeded to pan city officials for continuing where Lightfoot left off
Seven months into the new mayor’s term, the city is still struggling with how to address the increasing influx of asylum seekers, with Johnson in October warning that 22 busloads a day would likely be the new norm
More than five months from her appointment, the city is still struggling with how to address the increasing influx of asylum seekers, with Johnson in October warning that 22 busloads a day would likely be the new norm.
Just last week, the situation was revealed to be originally thought when records showed the city spent almost $1million on the shuttered migrant camp at a Brighton Park lot – despite warnings that the site was not safe after toxic chemicals and heavy metals were found onsite.
The plans were scraped just weeks before a a five-year-old boy fell ill and was pronounced dead at one of Chicago’s spread-thin shelters – a warehouse with no heating housing thousands of other migrants.
Videos from inside has since showed coughing and crying children, some so cold they were wearing snow jackets, as water leaked from the ceiling onto the cots below.
The shelter is run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a Kansas-based contractor the city has paid $100 million to operate shelters since September 2022 – as more than 300 migrants remain living at police stations waiting for placement into a facility.
The death of the child, identified by community members as Jean Carlo Martínez Rivero, is now being investigated, after an autopsy by Cook County medical examiner on Monday was deemed inconclusive.
Jean Carlos Martinez, 5, was pronounced dead on arrival in hospital on Sunday after days of being sick at the Pilsen shelter south of downtown Chicago
Video shot by a passerby showed trash piled up outside the shelter. The converted factory was the subject of numerous complaints about unsanitary conditions
At another meeting Monday where Johnson also faced heat, the former teachers said the blame for Jean’s death laid squarely with southern governors like Texas’s Gregg Abbott, for busing in migrants by the thousand to the so-called sanctuary city.
‘They’re just dropping off people anywhere,’ Johnson argued, days after the migrant meeting where Lawrence spoke was called off over the outpour of criticism.
‘Do you understand how raggedy and how evil that is,’ he continued of the Southern state’s practices, which have essentially made good on city’s like Chicago’s long-touted ‘sanctuart’ status.
‘And then you want to hold us accountable for something that’s happening down at the border? It’s sickening?’ he said, before claiming that many of the asylum-seekers arriving in Chicago are unwell due to the conditions they were held in at the border.
‘Do you hear me? They’re showing up sick,’ he said of the bussed arrivals.
‘The issue is not just how we respond in the city of Chicago, it’s the fact that we have a governor — a governor, an elected official in the state of Texas — that is placing families on buses without shoes, cold, wet, tired, hungry, afraid, traumatized.
‘And then they come to the city of Chicago where we have homelessness, we have mental health clinics that have been shut down and closed,’ he continued.
‘The governor of Texas needs to take a look in the mirror [and see] the chaos that he is causing for this country.
Claiming it was ‘not just a Chicago dynamic,’ he claimed men like Abbott are ‘attacking our country.’
Videos from inside the Pilsen shelter (pictured) showed coughing and crying children, some so cold they were wearing snow jackets, and water leaking from the ceiling onto the cots below
O’Hare International Airport accommodated hundreds of migrants in a screened off area as the crisis gathered steam this summer
On Thursday Lawrence questioned whether Johnson was following Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s directive in his attempts to address the crisis, or was actually ignoring at-risk communities in favor of the constant stream of migrants.
‘Now, whether it came from Gov. Pritzker or whomever that directed you on this, is it fair to these communities that have been waiting for years?’ she said.
Bringing up promises made by Johnson over the course of his upset campaign – including that public safety would remain the city’s top concern even amid the migrant situation – Lawrence cited how crime remains an issue across Chicago.
‘You said you on the West side, but you should know what’s going on over there as well,’ Lawrence said.
‘When are you going to have our neighborhoods cleaned up? And when are we going to get the rights that we deserve?’
Lawrence went on to mention the long list of lawful Chicagoans she said were also in need, including veterans, the homeless, and average, everyday citizens, before officials called off the meeting due to the crowd becoming outspoken and supposedly unruly
The decision drew criticism from Alderman Anthony Beale, who told officials before they exited: ‘We need to wake up. That’s all we’re trying to do, y’all.
Lawrence went on to mention the long list of lawful Chicagoans she said were also in need, including veterans, the homeless, and average, everyday citizens.
“They need to be taken care of,’ she said. ‘They need to stop being neglected. Because if we don’t have a voice here, we will have a voice out there.’
As she spoke, a chorus of voices rose up to agree – spurring the council to adjourn without considering the sanctuary status referendum vote.
The decision drew criticism from Alderman Anthony Beale, who told officials before they exited: ‘We need to wake up. That’s all we’re trying to do, y’all.
‘Our people are demanding change. They’re demanding resources, and they’re demanding that we do something different in this body.’
Meanwhile, crime remains an issue in the Windy City, particularly in the long-suffering neighborhoods Lawrence mentioned.
According to the city’s most recent crime data, incidents have actually risen by a drastic 17 percent from this time last year, when it was still in the midst of a post-pandemic crime wave.
That spate of crime, in many respects, has gone on to continue, with robberies up 23 percent and incidents of theft and sexual assault slightly up as well.
Meanwhile, crime remains an issue in the Windy City, particularly in the long-suffering neighborhoods Lawrence mentioned
According to the city’s most recent crime data, incidents have actually risen by a drastic 17 percent from this time last year, when it was still in the midst of a post-pandemic crime wave. That spate of crime, in many respects, has gone on to continue, with robberies up 23 percent and incidents of theft and sexual assault slightly up as well
‘But we are afraid of the truth,’ Beale said Thursday, before the conditions at the Pilsen shelter – one of 26 temporary shelters currently house 12,000 residents – was unmasked.
‘Crime is running rampant. Our schools are in trouble. We’re spending hundreds, millions of dollars on people that don’t even pay taxes and live in the city,” Beale said of the city’s current state.
‘I’m all for taking care of people. I get it. I am sympathetic as well. However, I’m more sympathetic for the people in my community that have been paying taxes their entire life, can’t get a furnace, can’t get a roof, can’t get a hot water heater, can’t get a back porch.
He went on to declare: ‘There’s no conscionable way we should be voting on hundreds of millions of dollars to just, you know, go to Brighton Park, only to have the whole thing blown up.’
As of Tuesday, more than 25,000 people have arrived in Chicago from the southern border since August 2022, with most coming from Central American countries like Venezuela and not Mexico.
Meanwhile, after nly achieving a win by 26,000 votes, Johnson has tried to appeal to those who didn’t back him in the election, stocking his transition team with familiar names from Chicago corporations and philanthropies beside leaders of organized labor and progressive groups.
His office in Monday – after being confronted with the five-year-old’s death – said the city had resettled or reunited more than 10,000 migrants and was sheltering 13,992 at 27 temporary shelters.