‘I Plead with You for Mercy’: Pritzker Urges Abbott to Stop Sending Migrants to Chicago amid Winter Storm

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) urged Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) to stop sending migrants to Chicago as the city braces for a severe winter storm over the weekend.

In a strongly-worded letter issued to Abbott on Friday, Pritzker said the subzero temperatures that the Prairie State will face in the coming days will prove “life-threatening” to all migrant-filled buses and planes bound for Chicago.

“You are now sending asylum seekers from Texas to the Upper Midwest in the middle of winter — many without coats, without shoes to protect them from the snow — to a city whose shelters are already overfilled with migrants you sent here,” Pritzker wrote.

Chicago temperatures are expected to go as low as -3 degrees overnight Saturday due to Winter Storm Gerri, which will continue to plunge Illinois below zero into early next week.

“I strongly urge you to stop sending people to Illinois in these conditions. You are dropping off asylum seekers without alerting us to their arrivals, at improper locations at all hours of the night,” Pritzker said, noting he was “hoping to appeal to your humanity.”

While calling the border crisis “untenable for border states,” the Illinois governor recommended that Illinois and Texas, along with other states, “come together in a bipartisan fashion to urge Congress to act” on passing immigration reform. Democrats and Republicans are currently negotiating the pending border deal, which would enact stricter asylum and border laws if approved by Congress.

“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,” he continued. “Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives, suspend your transports and do not send more people to our state.”

The plea comes as Texas has sent over 100,000 migrants to Democratic-controlled sanctuary cities under Operation Lone Star, which began in March 2021. Chicago has received more than 30,800 migrants by way of Texas-commissioned transportation since August 2022, Abbott’s office said in a press release on Friday.

Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris responded to the letter, according to the Austin American-Statesman, saying Texas “will continue transporting migrants to sanctuary cities to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis” until the current administration secures the southern border.

“Governor Pritzker was all too proud to call Illinois ‘the most welcoming state in the nation’ until Governor Abbott began transporting migrants to Chicago,” Mahaleris said. “Instead of complaining about migrants sent from Texas, where we are also preparing to experience severe winter weather across the state, Governor Pritzker should call on his party leader to finally do his job and secure the border – something he continues refusing to do.”

Although U.S. Customs and Border Protection hasn’t released the official border numbers for December yet, it’s estimated that over 302,000 migrants were documented trying to cross the southern border last month. Once published, the latest data will be a new record for any month.