According to officials, a plane carrying more than 350 asylum seekers from Texas arrived early on Sunday morning at an airport close to Chicago. This is a component of the state’s months-long initiative to abruptly transfer thousands of migrants to major cities around the nation.
Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana, Winnebago County Board Chairman Joe Chiarelli, and Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara received news on Saturday night that a plane transporting migrants would land at Rockford International Airport, according to a Facebook post from the City of Rockford.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson stated on Sunday on X, the former Twitter platform, that “there was no communication from Texas.” Rockford authorities initially notified City of Chicago officials about the San Antonio-bound flight.
Johnson continued on X, “This is the second documented instance of the Texas governor transporting asylum-seekers via private plane.”
The 355 migrants aboard the plane were put on buses as soon as it landed at roughly one in the morning, according to Rockford officials posted on Facebook.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson stated on Sunday on X, the former Twitter platform, that “there was no communication from Texas.” Rockford authorities initially notified City of Chicago officials about the San Antonio-bound flight.
Johnson continued on X, “This is the second documented instance of the Texas governor transporting asylum-seekers via private plane.”
The 355 migrants aboard the plane were put on buses as soon as it landed at roughly one in the morning, according to Rockford officials posted on Facebook.
At first, Rockford representatives said the passengers would be transported to the “landing zone” in downtown Chicago. Later, they posted an update on Facebook, stating that the buses were driven to the McHenry County boundary, which is roughly 60 miles northwest of the landing zone, by Winnebago County Sheriff’s deputies.
The buses did not stop along the route, according to officials.
Johnson included in a post on X The buses were chartered by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Sunday, and the passengers were “left to find their way to the city or dropped off in various surrounding suburbs.”
On Sunday, CNN contacted Abbott’s office regarding the Rockford aircraft and the buses that went to Chicago.
According to figures given by the governor’s office on Friday, Texas has bused nearly 90,000 migrants to Democratic-run “sanctuary cities” such as Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles since April 2022 under Abbott’s direction. Since August 2022, almost 28,000 asylum seekers have landed in Chicago alone.
Abbott said in a statement from the previous year that “it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all the chaos and problems that come with it,” to defend the busing of migrants who cross the southern border.
He declared, “Now, the rest of America can comprehend exactly what is happening.”
As CNN previously documented, a large number of the refugees arrive with incredibly minimal resources. Pedro Rios, San Diego program director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, told CNN on Friday that these individuals have frequently arrived in cold northeastern cities with “just a single T-shirt,” having been stripped of their warm clothing by Border Patrol agents and packing their belongings into a single bag.
On Facebook, the city of Rockford announced that if more aircraft land there, the local EOC will be triggered in order “to coordinate logistics and planning to ensure the safety of all involved throughout this process.”
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, the mayor called the issue “an international and federal crisis that local governments are being asked to subsidize.”
The status quo, in his words, is “unsustainable.”
The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, “is determined to continue to sow seeds of chaos,” Johnson added, despite our efforts to organize and coordinate responses to this humanitarian disaster. “He’s taking on this really risky responsibility of boarding people on planes and delivering them to our different cities. This is undoubtedly an issue with both our national security and the kind of anarchy this governor is dedicated to enforcing.
Following the passage of municipal legislation to address “rogue buses” from Texas dumping off migrants all over the city, Chicago started impounding and towing buses earlier this month, as CNN previously reported.
The increase in migrants entering the US across the southern border coincides with the planes and buses from Texas. According to early Homeland Security numbers obtained from CNN, border officials encountered more than 225,000 migrants this month, the largest monthly total since 2000 along the US-Mexico border.
