According to the latest city data, since August 2022, Chicago has received nearly 40,000 migrants that entered the U.S. illegally through the southern border. Currently, more than 14,000 are in shelters, while hundreds of others are being held at facilities like police stations and O’Hare International Airport. Last year, Chicago began providing migrants with free services, including up to $9,000 in rental assistance, $160 million in housing funding, and $70 million to provide healthcare, all despite a projected budget deficit of $538 million for 2024. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has directed $640 million to address the migrant crisis. Local residents say those investments could have been made for struggling Americans already living there. Cata Truss, a 57-year-old mother who is pursuing legal action against Chicago, is blasting city officials for prioritizing illegal aliens over black residents who have been asking for years for investment into their communities but were denied. “All these people, I have supported every one of them,” she told the Free Press (FP), speaking about Mayor Branson Johnson and Democrat city officials. “I was like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’” City officials sought to turn a park fieldhouse into a migrant shelter. However, Truss was among local residents who offered fierce pushback and prevented the effort from moving forward. Truss, who calls the Amundsen Park field house “the crown jewel of the community,” says the space should not be used to house illegal aliens when there are black Chicagoans who need it. “There’s a humanitarian crisis in the black community,” Truss told FP. “But every time we have a need in our community, we’re told that there are no funds. There’s no money for us.” The City of Chicago is now facing seven lawsuits from residents over its migrant policies. Two of the lawsuits are from six black plaintiffs who are angered over receiving a lack of community investment, while the city is providing hundreds of millions of dollars to care for foreigners. The third lawsuit is led by five Hispanic plaintiffs and one Asian American plaintiff. Truss is being represented by Deidre Baumann, a Democratic civil rights attorney. Black Chicago residents, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, are now blaming their own party for the failures they are seeing within their communities. “What the Democratic Party doesn’t want black people to hear is that this is a Biden policy,” says J. Darnell Jones, another plaintiff suing the city. “Biden is allowing the borders to remain open.”Officials in Chicago are facing multiple lawsuits from black residents over the city’s response to the U.S. migrant crisis.
