By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
“Chaos and confusion.” That’s what Gov. J.B. Pritzker claims President Trump is creating as he plans to deport from America illegal immigrants with criminal records. Some 530,000 illegal immigrants reside in Illinois, the nation’s fifth-most according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Pritzker says Trump might initially target as many as 2,000 immigrants in Illinois for deportation.
Many Illinoisans will be surprised by Pritzker’s claim given the chaos he’s created with his own staunch support of open borders and Illinois’ sanctuary status. It’s been nearly three years of daily disorder in Illinois, largely in Chicago. Streams of incoming buses, full of illegal immigrants. Overrun police stations. Immigrant camps. Disenfranchised residents. Public confrontations between the mayor and the governor. Even more crime. It’s been ugly.
Then there are the costs of Pritzker and his Democratic supermajorities’ support for sanctuary policies. It will be some time before we can properly account for all the spending, but it, too, contributes heavily to the chaos. Billions are being siphoned away from Illinois’ actual residents and directed toward migrants. That’s money that could have gone to more services for Illinois’ most vulnerable citizens, or to lower taxes, or to smaller budget deficits.
Take spending on immigrant healthcare alone. A Wirepoints review of IDHFS’ most recent reports shows the state has spent a cumulative $1.5 billion since 2022 on the approximately 42,000 illegal immigrants who’ve enrolled in state-funded programs called Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA). Those programs don’t qualify for a federal Medicaid match, so the full cost is borne by Illinois taxpayers.
That’s on top of the healthcare spending on “asylum seekers” who are separately eligible for Medicaid. Wirepoints was not able to obtain those costs.
There’s also spending on housing, transportation, legal services and more for the asylum seekers. We estimated those costs earlier last year and they add up to hundreds of millions more.
Other costs, like education, are harder to quantify. We estimate the Chicago Public Schools will spend up to $400 million in fiscal year 2025, based on student enrollment numbers provided by the city (up to 17,000 migrant students at an operating cost of $24,132 per student). But there are tens of thousands more immigrant children in cities like Waukegan, Cicero and Elgin.
In all, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that illegal immigrants cost Illinoisans $3.9 billion. And that’s just for state and local costs. Illinoisans also pay their share of the billions being spent on the federal expenses arising from illegal immigration.
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Illinois’ leaders incentivized poor migrants to come here with free housing, free healthcare and other benefits even though Chicago and the state weren’t prepared for the costs, neither financially nor politically.
Both the state and city face billions in budget shortfalls. Gov. Pritzker’s office projects $23 billion in budget deficits over the next five years. And Mayor Johnson’s budgets for Chicago and Chicago Public Schools face multi-year billion-dollar deficits of their own. Neither leader has proven able to manage the costs of their own constituents. Adding tens of thousands of poor migrant workers who are dependent on handouts is sheer malgovernance.
The political fallout is also clear. Illinoisans don’t want this. Not because they’re anti-immigrant, but because they’re the ones suffering the consequences of their politicians’ bad decisions. Illinoisans are being shafted, forced to watch as their tax dollars are used to provide services to illegals that even citizens don’t have access to. The migrants suffer too, especially the asylum seekers. The state and the city have no real plan for them, so they stand around in freezing weather begging for money in front of Jewels and Walmarts.
Open borders. Sanctuary cities. Sanctuary states. That’s the real chaos. That’s what needs to be ended.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Regardless of what Trump disrupts, Illinoisans themselves must disrupt far more to fix this state
- Trump brings Stellantis jobs to Illinois. Pritzker takes credit.
- Illinois badly needs disruption. Trump will deliver some, but most must come from everyday Illinoisans
- While S&P downgrades Chicago, Mayor Johnson and city officials deny failures
- Adults murdering kids. Kids murdering kids. “Random” bullets killing kids. Nearly 100 dead youth in Chicago in 2024
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
Sanctuary cities/states is code for Cartel distribution hubs. A great place to hide in the open their operations. Real ‘diversity’ mostly exists in large cities and why laws favor foreign nationals over citizens… Think about that. Also explains why sanctuary mayors, governors and AG’s legislate immediate release no bail laws. Think about that. Since Clinton, the ‘democrats’ have utilized language as their tool to control the populace. The psychological idiom ‘politically correct’ led to undocumented migrants and nothing more than control the language, control the conversation to control the people. Majority of elected public servants in these Cartel states are… Read more »
Illinoisans and Chicagoans elected Pritzker and Johnson by good margins. Will those voters learn from their mistakes?
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A lot of people like to hire illegals. They work cheap, work hard, and may be afraid of being reported or deported.
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Mark, your !?*$# popover ads are making my browser freeze! 🙁
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. Some 530,000 illegal immigrants reside in Illinois, the nation’s fifth-most according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Pritzker says Trump might initially target as many as 2,000 immigrants in Illinois for deportation.
Still leaves 528,000 left.
People simply don’t support open borders. As usual Pritzker and Brando disregard the residents of Illinois in favor of their extremist leftist policies.
Polling Illinois voters on what they think of Chicago or state sanctuary policies and astronomical taxpayer spending is needed. Or, are there opinion pols out there?
Here’s a new one on national polls. Chicago polls last year showed majority support deportations.https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/01/23/cnns_enten_there_has_been_a_massive_shift_on_immigration_the_majority_of_americans_believe_illegals_should_be_deported.html
here’s another pol/ article from a day ago:
https://www.newsweek.com/how-popular-deporting-migrants-donald-trump-polls-2020482
I never one heard JBP give a logical, reasoned, with-examples, in-depth argument/explanation as to why he believes an unsecured open border is better than a closed, controlled, secured border. I did hear a reasoned, with-examples, smart, in-depth argument from Trump on why a secured border is better for me and my society than an open border. All I heard from JBP about the border was irrational histrionics and gaslighting and diversions into woke idealism. No rational defense of why his unsecured border is better than Trumps secured border. Glad the whole country began to see this lack of a good… Read more »
I always ask, who does it benefit to have homeless immigrant families with children begging on street corners and intersections throughout the city and suburbs? Why as a society have we decided to do this? I’ve always said that there’s two main reasons, the first being the Democrat’s desire to import future voters. Trump won the decisive battle ground states in 2016 by 40k, and Biden won by an even smaller margin in 2020. Trump won the battle ground states in 2024, according to AI slop output, by 760,000. This isn’t even 1/10th of the illegal immigrants Biden let into… Read more »
We have a “homeless industrial complex”. It is a complex system that works together to keep the cash flowing into the industry.
Another reason. Divide and Conquer. Not necessarily by fighting but by redistributing money and resources from those who have been getting money/benefits for generations and they did nothing to enhance their standard of living and giving it to the new influx of illegals. Look at the show. The Monsters are due on Maple street from the Twilight Zone. Change a few things around like lights on and off or cars not starting and after a while they were at each others throats to see who the aliens were. Not one shot was fired by the aliens. They said it will… Read more »
Meanwhile, some random folks are out here doing real journalism.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/must-watch-ben-bergquam-stumps-illinois-gov-jb/
It would be nice to see Fox pick this up so some people actually start to see this. Doubtful any local media will show it. If Pritzker and Brando start getting tough questions they’ll think twice about doing these photo ops which are a total love fest with his local media lackeys.
William j Kelley has been doing it for years. I m going to give it a try myself. I’m glad we agree on something.
https://x.com/Williamjkelly/status/1879944629820244340
I’d much rather hear Pritzker say that all immigration should be done though the proper channels only and that illegal immigration and the “asylum” scam (not all asylum requests are bogus and only those should be considered) should not be tolerated. Thats just common sense, and apparently too much to ask.
Fat chance of that!
😂