Pritzker: I’ll Protect Illegal Immigrants, It Was a ‘Problem’ When Texas Sent Us Migrants

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Gov. JB Pritzker (D) vowed to “do everything that I can to protect our undocumented immigrants.” But also stated that the state “had the problem of the very inhumane shipping of migrants” from Texas to Illinois.

Pritzker said, “I want to be clear that there are certain circumstances in which the federal government and state governments should work together to allow deportation, an example would be somebody who’s been convicted of a violent crime. But they’re talking about rounding up people who are law-abiding undocumented immigrants in this country, many of whom are working, paying taxes, not getting any benefits for those taxes, I might add. … So, look, I’m going to do everything that I can to protect our undocumented immigrants. They’re residents of our state. And I, also, obviously, need to make sure that whatever they’re doing in our state, the federal government, that it is actually within federal law or state law for them to do it.”

He added, “[W]hen we had the problem of the very inhumane shipping of migrants from the state of Texas to Illinois, I, of course, went to the federal government and said, well, we need a place to put them, because we may run out of places. Can you provide us with locations that the federal government may own that we could use? And there really isn’t anything like it.”

Pritzker further stated that the taxes paid by illegal immigrants “are of great interest — you can imagine — to the country and to the state of Illinois.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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