For several decades, Americans have lamented the demise of their once-great big cities. In the country’s rise to superpower status after World War II, metropolises like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were attractive destinations to anyone looking for opportunity and the best life in the West had to offer.
Today, it seems most people can’t escape from big cities fast enough. Crime is on the rise, as is overcrowding, the high cost of living and general squalor. This is not the result of an act of God, but the consequences for years of bad public policies. Who have been the loudest advocates for these policies? Without question, it has been America’s sanctuary mayors, and it is past time to call them out for the destruction they have wrought.
Sanctuary mayors, alongside city council members, governors and other political figures of the same ilk, believe in lawless communities. By refusing to cooperate with federal immigration laws, they bring chaos into their cities and make victims of not just legal residents, but the illegal migrants they claim to be helping.
Since the corporate media has long ago abandoned its watchdog role and hides the truth about sanctuary cities, it falls on others to call out those responsible for this mayhem. The Immigration Reform Law Institute recently compiled a ranking of America’s worst sanctuary mayors for 2024, and every mayor cited has been a shameless ambassador for the policies that have made their cities more overcrowded, broke and dangerous.
Included in the list is Mayor Kelly Girtz of Athens, Georgia, who rose to national infamy after his policies played a role in the brutal slaughter of a young student at the University of Georgia. Laken Riley, 22, was allegedly murdered by a Venezuelan gang member who was in the country illegally and had been protected by Girtz’s sanctuary policies. In 2019, Girtz signed a declaration promising to protect “our immigrant and undocumented neighbors, especially those of Latinx heritage,” who he claimed “face daily fears and threats from individuals and institutions such as ICE.”
An investigation by IRLI found that Girtz had privately defended his anti-border policies even in the wake of Riley’s murder. The investigation revealed that Girtz had defended his city’s refusal to cooperate with ICE detainers in a private email to the city’s sheriff.
Another mayor on the list and deserving of shame is Eric Adams of New York. Just months before taking office in 2021, Adams proudly boasted that New York City would remain a sanctuary city under his leadership, but soon discovered his rhetoric was unsustainable. After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began bussing immigrants to New York, Adams began lashing out.
He accused the governor of racism, sued the charter bus companies who transported them, and began begging the federal government for handouts to cover the costs of his city’s anti-border policies, which have totaled in the billions of dollars. Later, Adams said the continued arrivals threatened to destroy New York City. “Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said at the time. Right-thinking Americans can easily see an ending that Adams apparently cannot: simply end New York’s kamikaze sanctuary policies.
While Adams has been a sorry shepherd for his city, the worst mayor in the ranking is Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, and he richly deserves the title of America’s Worst Sanctuary Mayor. During his campaign last year, Johnson came out in support of allowing foreign nationals to vote in local elections. One of the first executive orders Johnson signed after taking office last year was one reaffirming Chicago’s status as a “welcoming and sanctuary” city, while establishing a new deputy mayor’s office to support immigrants.
Johnson has continued full steam ahead with his sanctuary policies. He is set to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money caring for immigrants even as many of his own citizens languish in poverty. Johnson even attempted to build a shelter on the South Side of the city that would have housed 900 even as tens of thousands of Chicago residents remain homeless.
As a result of Johnson’s sanctuary permissiveness, the overflow has been housed in tents cities, homeless shelters and even on the floors of police stations and O’Hare airport.
These and other sanctuary mayors would still be getting away with this ransacking of their cities, if not for the fact that Joe Biden’s surrender of the southern border resulted in a stampede to sanctuary cities by illegal border crossers. “Bring it on,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, also in the IRLI ranking, said at the time. “You better believe we can handle it.”
As it turned out, he couldn’t handle it. Neither could the rest of the sanctuary cities, which now face financial hardship, rising crime and furious residents. These mayors can no longer hide behind the façade of humanitarian concern, as they have brought incalculable despair to their cities. America’s experiment with sanctuary cities has been an abject failure that should never again be repeated.
Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington, D.C, and co-host of IRLI’s “No Border, No Country” podcast.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
