A top official in the Chicago mayor's office rescinded a prediction that the city could see up to 25,000 migrants bused in from Texas for next week's Democratic National Convention, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.
The city's migrant czar, Deputy Mayor Beatriz Ponce de Leon, sounded the alarm in late July that Chicago could get inundated with 20,000-25,000 migrants despite zero migrant buses arriving since June 17, a city spokesperson said.
"We at this point do not have any credible intel that there will be a large surge in terms of buses coming from Texas," Ponce de Leon told the Tribune.
Chicago, which boasts it is a sanctuary city, has received 46,418 migrants since August 2022, with nearly 37,000 of those arriving on 1,000 buses from Texas alone.
However, President Joe Biden cut a deal with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to cut down on illegal crossings. Further, Biden issued an election-year executive order curtailing the ability of migrants who cross illegally to apply for asylum.
Despite the slowdown, Ponce de Leon made her projections based on the amount of migrants Chicago was taking in at the height of its crisis last winter, the Tribune reported.
[Texas Gov. Greg] "Abbott would have to send a lot of buses into Mexico, load them up in Mexico, then bring them across himself," Ruben Garcia, who runs several shelters for asylum seekers in El Paso, Texas, told the Tribune.
The Democratic convention begins Monday.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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