Chicago Shifts $95M in Federal COVID-19 Relief Funds to Illegal Housing Costs

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

The sanctuary city of Chicago is buckling under the catastrophe brought on by Joe Biden’s broken border policies.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently signaled that the city is at a breaking point due to the influx of illegal aliens in the city.

In an appearance on CNN, Johnson was reduced to begging Biden for help, “We have reached a critical point in this mission that absent real, significant intervention immediately, our local economies are not designed and built to respond to this type of crisis.”

Democrat Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says “it’s the entire country that is now at stake” if Congress doesn’t pass a “pathway to citizenship” for the millions of illegal immigrants pouring across the open southern border pic.twitter.com/v12GGsFkl3

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 27, 2023

Now, Johnson’s top aides have announced the city will shift $95 million in COVID-19 relief funds to cover some of the costs of sheltering thousands of illegals coming to the city.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

“This doesn’t change that outlook,” Johnson’s senior adviser, Jason Lee, told the Sun-Times. “We’re going to continue to lobby the federal government for more support as the situation becomes, frankly, more unstable.”
The city had budgeted about $152 million for 2023 city operations to be covered in American Rescue Plan Act funds, the dollars allotted by the federal government in 2021 to help local governments make ends meet amid COVID-19 shutdowns.

Better-than-expected city revenue means some of those operational costs can be covered by the city’s corporate fund, freeing up $95 million in federal dollars for the migrant crisis, said city Budget Director Annette Guzman.

The city so far has spent more than $138 million to care for the new arrivals, mostly Venezuelan migrants from the southern U.S. border who have been bused and flown to Chicago by Republican leaders aiming to shift costs to Democratic-led cities.

Johnson said in a statement,  “[W]e are allocating federal funds to deal with a federal problem. By allocating ARPA funding for this mission, we are meeting the City’s financial obligations without cutting the critical services that Chicagoans rely on every day.”

CBS Chicago investigators uncovered records showing Chicago has paid out $138 million from October 2022 to the present to address the needs of illegals in the city.

CBS Chicago reports:

The largest recipient of the money was Favorite Healthcare Staffing – a healthcare staffing firm. The firm received $93 million – 68 percent of the total sum.

Equitable Social Solutions, a company that works in homelessness prevention and housing support, got $19 million.

The family-owned food service company Open Kitchens got $15 million.

The Gateway Pundit reported on the sweet deal Favorite Healthcare Staffing has with the city, where some employees were being paid rates ranging from nearly $50 to $156 an hour for regular pay and from $75 to $234 an hour for overtime.

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