Mayor Lori Lightfoot is pictured in an Aug. 10, 2022, file photo. (WTTW News)
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Eric Adams sent a joint letter to Colorado’s governor urging his administration to stop busing migrants to their respective cities.
Lightfoot and Adams are asking Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to instead partner with Chicago and New York to advocate for federal solutions to the nation’s ongoing challenges surrounding asylum seekers, according to a press release from Lightfoot’s office.
“Although we share the concerns of accommodating the flood of asylum seekers, overburdening other cities is not the solution,” Lightfoot and Adams wrote. “We respectfully demand that you cease and desist sending migrants to New York City and Chicago. Since December of 2022, Chicago and New York City have received hundreds of individuals from Colorado. Before the first bus arrived in either of our cities, we informed a Colorado official directly that neither city had any additional room to accommodate any more migrants because of the thousands of migrants that had already been inhumanely bused to our respective cities from Texas since spring of 2022.”
Since Aug. 31, 2022, a total of 3,854 immigrants have been bused to Chicago from Texas, with an additional 1,400 immigrants coming from other states, officials have said. Since then, the city has set up 11 emergency shelters.
Lightfoot has asked state officials to send $54 million in emergency funding to the city to care for the immigrants.
The release did not state how many people have been bused to Chicago from Colorado. Earlier in the week, Chicago officials declined to specifiy to WTTW News how many people have been bused from Colorado.
