By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner | Wirepoints
“Chaos and confusion.” That’s what Gov. J.B. Pritzker claims President Trump is creating as he plans to deport from America illegal immigrants with criminal records. Some 530,000 illegal immigrants reside in Illinois, the nation’s fifth-most according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Pritzker says Trump might initially target as many as 2,000 immigrants in Illinois for deportation.
Many Illinoisans will be surprised by Pritzker’s claim given the chaos he’s created with his own staunch support of open borders and Illinois’ sanctuary status. It’s been nearly three years of daily disorder in Illinois, largely in Chicago. Streams of incoming buses, full of illegal immigrants. Overrun police stations. Immigrant camps. Disenfranchised residents. Public confrontations between the mayor and the governor. Even more crime. It’s been ugly.
Then there are the costs of Pritzker and his Democratic supermajorities’ support for sanctuary policies. It will be some time before we can properly account for all the spending, but it, too, contributes heavily to the chaos. Billions are being siphoned away from Illinois’ actual residents and directed toward migrants. That’s money that could have gone to more services for Illinois’ most vulnerable citizens, or to lower taxes, or to smaller budget deficits.
Take spending on immigrant healthcare alone. A Wirepoints review of IDHFS’ most recent reports shows the state has spent a cumulative $1.5 billion since 2022 on the approximately 42,000 illegal immigrants who’ve enrolled in state-funded programs called Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA). Those programs don’t qualify for a federal Medicaid match, so the full cost is borne by Illinois taxpayers.
That’s on top of the healthcare spending on “asylum seekers” who are separately eligible for Medicaid. Wirepoints was not able to obtain those costs.
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There’s also spending on housing, transportation, legal services and more for the asylum seekers. We estimated those costs earlier last year and they add up to hundreds of millions more.
Read more here.
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