Awaiting surge, Pritzker says border crossings down past several months

(The Center Square) – Gov. J.B. Pritzker still won’t say if he’s being vetted to be the Democrat’s next vice presidential candidate, but he did comment on the potential for a new wave of migrants coming the state.

An Illinois Republican says U.S. taxpayers can’t afford Pritzker's policies on the national ticket.

Asked Monday if he’s being vetted for second in command of the country now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Pritzker refused to share any “private conversations” with the vice president.

“Other than to say that I have committed myself to Kamala Harris that I will go out and work my heart out to win this election because we must because we cannot have Donald Trump as president of the United States,” Pritzker said.

State Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, speculated that Pritzker has ambitions for higher office and his agenda is far left and Marxist, he doesn’t care about the Constitution or the border and will tax, borrow and spend more if he’s the second most powerful person next to the president.

“I’m not really sure that Illinoians can afford much more of J.B. Pritzker,” Halbrook told The Center Square. “I’m pretty sure that America cannot afford anymore of the Democrats’ policies.”

Democrats meet in Chicago for their national convention beginning Aug. 19. It’s unclear when Harris will select her running mate. Pritzker said that could happen over the next 10 to 14 days.

Ahead of the convention, a surge of non-citizen migrants is expected. Blame for the issue continues.

For nearly two years, Chicago has received more than 45,000 non-citizen migrants being transported from the southern U.S. Border. Earlier this month at the Republican National Convention, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to continue transporting migrants to sanctuary cities like Chicago that don’t enforce federal immigration law.

“Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border,” he said.

Asked about it Monday at an unrelated event, Pritzker said state and local officials are working on expanding their capacity for a possible surge of non-citizen migrant arrivals in the weeks ahead, but haven’t seen it yet.

“We have a governor in Texas who cares nothing for the human beings who have crossed the border who are in his state, he frankly ships them all across the country including to Chicago,” Pritzker said. “But we have not seen any evidence of him increasing the numbers that have been sent to the city of Chicago.”

Pritzker said border crossings have slowed in the past few weeks because of agreements the Biden administration has put in place with several countries to make sure “that we’ve stemmed the tide of border crossings.”

“We’ve seen some of the lowest numbers of border crossings over the last two years, over the last several months,” Pritzker said. “I check on that weekly.”

The Center Square fact-checked Biden's similar claims about border crossings being down and found them to be false. Accounting for all the data, including new ways the Biden administration is allowing foreign nationals to enter the country and gotaway data that is not reported publicly, the claims are verifiably false.

Monthly encounters at ports of entry of foreign nationals with no lawful basis to enter increased from nearly 20,000 at the end of the Trump administration to more than 117,000 in June 2024 under the Biden administration.

Halbrook said Texas has been inundated with migrants because of the Biden-Harris administration’s porous border policies.

“The citizens of Texas can’t take this any longer. Why should they be held responsible to pay the freight on the bad Washington D.C. policy,” Halbrook said.

Abbott’s program has cost Texas taxpayers at least $148 million over the past 24 months, according to the Texas Tribune. For Illinois taxpayers, the cost of subsidizing non-citizen health care, housing, food, school and even legal services is budgeted at more than $900 million in the fiscal year that started July 1. Taxpayers have already spent more than $1 billion on such services since August 2022.