'Sanctuary cities' regretful: Biden border invasion hits their budgets hard, walk back sanctuary policies

In blue cities all across the fruited plain, lawmakers who initially rolled out the red carpet for illegal aliens, are having something of a "buyer’s remorse," according to The Liberty Daily. Constituents are growing tired of having to foot the bill for illegals in their communities and are letting their mayors know about it. 

Cities such as New York, Chicago, and Denver, who all proudly bore the banner of sanctuary city, have begun a move away from their status as sanctuary jurisdictions, enacting policy shifts for their illegal alien shelters over the past few months, strangled by the enormous financial cost of housing illegals who invaded the U.S. under the Biden administration’s open border policies. 

Statistics show that the cities have spent well over $1 billion combined to house and feed hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in the past several years, according to a review of their spending. 

“Never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a September 2023 town hall meeting with constituents, complaining at the time that New York was receiving “up to 10,000 migrants a month” at that time. 

“This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams continued. “Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut–every service in this city is going to be impacted.” 

According to New York City officials, the city has seen over 200,000 illegals come into the city since Spring 2022. That influx has caused Adams to implement 5% budget cuts in September 2023 for government programs and services in order to pay for housing and other services for illegals. In August 2023, he complained the city was reaching a “breaking point” due to the massive inflow of illegals. 

City officials say the Big Apple has spent $1.45 billion on illegals in FY-2023, which has forced the city to put a limit on the length of shelter stays. 

Illegals have been ordered to leave after 30 days with no means to reapply, although the city does honor some medical exemptions or others for “extenuating circumstances,” according to a dictate from Adams in March. Illegals under the age of 23 were authorized to stay in the shelter system for 60 days, however exceptions were made for families. 

Adams initially put on a front when in early 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) sent busloads of illegals to New York, sharing the “wealth” of illegals that border states had been dealing with. 

“This is a right-to-shelter state, and we’re going to continue to do that,” he said in August 2022. “New York CIty is a city that has always represented the democratic values, and the values of our city, of showing our compassion, and that’s what we’re doing here today.” 

Just over two years later, however, reality has set in and Adams is changing his tune. 

So is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who held a press conference last month where he announced the city would be removing illegals from taxpayer-funded shelters in the Windy City. Instead of blaming Biden for the invasion of illegals, however, Johnson attempted to lay the blame on congressional Republicans. 

“Congress, of course, refuses to respond to President Biden’s leadership and they refused to enact real substantive immigration reform policy because that’s really what we need.” Johnson was referring to the so-called “bipartisan” immigration bill that only a few Republicans, mostly RINOs signed off on. That bill would have granted de-facto amnesty to over one million illegals every year. Republicans shot it down, which was not surprising. Meanwhile, a simple return to Trump-era immigration policies would have put the border under control. 

In August 2022, over 43,000 illegals entered Chicago, which has thus far spent over $150 million to feed and house them, according to the Chicago Tribune. So bad has the financial situation gotten that Chicago at one time was faced with a $538 million budget deficit, with over $200 million allocated to the illegal alien crisis. 

Johnson has another more pressing reason to get the illegal alien situation under control. The city is poised to host the Democratic National Convention in August amid simmering tensions on city streets over the Israel-Hamas war and other issues. 

Only months before his June presser, Johnson said the city was able to host an additional 400,000 to 700,000 illegal aliens. 

Denver, meanwhile, has seen an influx of over 42,000 illegals from Central and South America since December 2022, the Common Sense Institute reports. That organization believes that Denver taxpayers and NGOs have spent over $340 million to feed, clothes, shelter and provide other services to them. 

Denver earlier this year saw Mayor Mike Johnston implement wide-ranging budget cuts to pay for illegal alien services, including a cut of $8.4 million to the Denver Police Department, and a $2.5 million cut to the fire department, for a total of nearly $11 million in cuts to city emergency services. 

Denver closed four migrant shelters earlier this year in response to community backlash, which is saving the city tens of millions of dollars, Axios reported. The number of illegals has now dropped down to more manageable numbers. 

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, New York, Chicago, and Denver are all self-declared sanctuary cities and have enacted policies that prevent federal immigration authorities from apprehending illegal aliens. 

“These hypocritical mayors across the country were all too happy to tout their sanctuary city statuses until Texas bused over 119,000 migrants, collectively, to their self-declared sanctuary cities,” Andrew Mahaleris, press secretary for Abbott, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

“These cities are only dealing with a fraction of what our small border communities deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Mahaleris continued. 

Texas has been dealing with the brunt of Biden’s open border policies. In response to what he called a failure of the Biden administration in policing the southern border, Abbott launched “Operation Lone Star,” which empowered Texas law enforcement officials to crack down on illegal immigration within the state and to bus illegals to self-identifying sanctuary cities. 

For his part, Abbott has vowed to continue busing illegals to sanctuary cities until Biden takes the crisis at the southern border seriously. 

“The real crisis isn’t in these major cities–its’ on our southern border, where President Biden’s open border policies have allowed record-high levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and weapons to surge into our state and country,” Mahaleris said. “Until President Biden steps up and does his job, Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border towns.”