Chicago leaders approve an additional $51million on migrant care trends now
After a dramatic and emotional session in Chicago City Hall, lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to spend an extra $51 million on the city's escalating migrant crisis.
During a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, one Alderman was reduced to tears while urging council members and Chicagoans that it was important for black residents look out for the migrants flooding into the city.
Others suggested the money should not be spent on migrants but on supporting neglected black communities. The atmosphere became so heated that the mayor had to pause at points, and people were escorted out by police.
The new funding, which passed 43 votes to 13, is only to last until June and designed to help Mayor Brandon Johnson, who assumed office just two weeks ago, navigate a crisis he inherited from the outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot.
In her final days as mayor, she declared the migrant situation in Chicago a 'state of emergency'. Officials in Chicago have said they cannot afford to rent hotel rooms for the more than 10,000 migrants, who have arrived in the city and with nowhere else to go, started filling police stations.
Recent videos have shown police station floors covered with mattresses for migrants to use as makeshift homes after arriving in the city from the US-Mexico border.
During a dramatic session on Wednesday afternoon lawmakers in Chicago voted in favor of a temporary $51 million package to manage the city's escalating migrant crisis. Pictured is an animated man addressing council members
The funding, which passed 43-13, is only to last until June and is designed to help Mayor Brandon Johnson adjust to the crisis he inherited from previous mayor, Lori Lightfoot
The new money will be spent on staffing, food, transportation and legal services at temporary shelters, in the hopes it will ease the city's crisis.
Alderman Jason Ervin, the budget committee chairman, told ABC7 the city is going to have to come up with a plan for the long term, and that the money is primarily intended to give Johnson's administration breathing room.
'There does need to be a greater plan and I do think this was always designed to give the incoming administration time to do that. This is a stop-gap measure, pure and simple,' he said after the proposal passed.
Much of the debate Wednesday afternoon was racially charged and considered black Chicagoans and Hispanic migrants as two separate groups in need.
'We need to allocate some of this money for our black children, for the
