(NewsNation) — The mayor of a Chicago suburb that is now housing around 30 migrant families in a local hotel said his issue with Illinois and the city stems from logistics, and has nothing to do with the plight of the people temporarily calling his village home.
“We want to be a welcoming place for people to be safe in our community, but I needed to know about this,” Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso said during an appearance Friday on NewsNation’s “On Balance With Leland Vittert.” “My board needed to know about this and more important our residents needed to know about this.”
The village is caught up in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to bus migrants to major cities run by Democrats, including Chicago. After bashing Abbott for treating migrants like “cargo,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sent migrants arriving on a bus to her city on another bus, taking them outside of Chicago and into the suburbs.
Grasso said he’s sympathetic to the migrants’ situation as a descendant of immigrants himself.
“It’s not about these people. We welcome their opportunity to become Americans and to find a new life,” Grasso said.
A spokesperson for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the hotel in question has taken in refugees before, and questioned why Grasso was complaining about this group.
“Let’s not make it about the migrants,” Grasso said. “This is about the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois being sanctuaries. I guess now I live in a sanctuary state,” he lamented.