‘Non-sanctuary’ Illinois county puts up signs telling migrant buses to stay away
Rachel Schilke
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Officials in an Illinois county put up signs along exits on Interstate 55 telling migrant buses they were not welcome in the area over the holiday weekend. The move comes as more Chicago suburbs take strides to prevent the city’s influx of immigrants from overflowing into their towns.
Grundy County, which recently passed a resolution declaring it a “non-sanctuary county for immigration,” placed two digital signs along I-55’s northbound exits by Dwight and Gardner that read “NO MIGRANT BUSES THIS EXIT” on Saturday. The signs went up in response to reports of buses dropping off asylum-seekers in other nearby communities, Grundy County Sheriff Ken Briley said to the Chicago Tribune.
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“We wanted to get us through the holiday weekend so we didn’t run into the unfortunate circumstances of having these people dropped in rural Grundy County with no place to go,” Briley said.
The sheriff said no buses stopped in the county, the signs have been removed, and there are no plans to put them back up. He said an emergency plan was in place to take migrants to Joliet if any ended up in Grundy County. Joliet police and Will County emergency management would coordinate to direct migrants to trains bound for Chicago.
“If someone got lost or thought by mistake that this was Chicago, those signs were a directory,” Grundy County State’s Attorney Russell Baker said. “We thought the signs could persuade bus drivers, if lost, to keep going on I-55 to places that are equipped to handle [migrants].”
Kankakee officials reported that four days before Christmas, a bus dropped off 30 to 40 migrants at a gas station around 4:30 a.m. Three hours later, police showed up to find people wrapped in blankets, with some staying at the gas station while others were spotted walking on the highway.
“The passengers, hailing from Venezuela, were left without money, food, adequate clothing, and were under the impression that they had reached their destination,” the Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
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This is the latest event involving immigrants filtering into Chicago suburbs. Naperville, Aurora, Fox River Grove, Elmhurst, and Cicero are among the towns and villages that have witnessed busloads of migrants arriving in recent weeks. Several of the suburbs are rejecting the buses, threatening to fine or impound them if they drop off homeless immigrants. Villages of Schaumburg and Elk Grove Village have passed ordinances preventing illegal immigrants from being housed in hotels, and Oak Park is now evicting 150 immigrants living in the town’s hotel and YMCA.
Grundy County passed its “non-sanctuary” status resolution two weeks ago, rededicating its “limited resources” to residents in need, such as seniors, veterans, homeless people, and those living below the poverty line.