Chicago Dem calls out city's mishandling of migrant crisis, urges for crime crackdown ahead of 2024 convention
Fox News
Speaking with Fox News Digital, Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez blasted the city's handling of the ongoing migrant crisis and how he's "cautiously optimistic" about the new mayor.
"We were woefully underprepared in our efforts to help these individuals who are have been shipped to our city and I think many people have used them as pawns for political gains," Lopez told Fox News Digital. "The fact of the matter is this that we could have, with the amount of money we spent at this point, we could have built shelters for these people to be welcomed in, to get medical care for, to have housing for. But we haven't lived up to the moment… She's leaving it to the next administration of Brandon Johnson to contend with the humanitarian crisis that was delivered to her by Abbott, but made worse by her own ineptitude." Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
Lopez, perhaps the most vocal Lightfoot critics among Chicago Democrats who at one point threw his hat in the ring to challenge her in the mayoral race, said she "stoked racial fears and to further divide the city" by supplanting migrants into neighborhoods unbeknownst to community leaders, leaving many of the migrants to "find refuge in police district stations across the entire city."
Her administration, he said, refused to work with him in trying to give the migrants appropriate shelter, pointing to a field house located in his ward that could have housed up to nearly 300 migrants.