Share and Follow
Criminal enterprises in the Chicago area are benefiting from the migrant crisis as they recruit illegal immigrants to carry out crimes with little legal repercussions, a former Illinois police chief says.
“The frustration with this migrant crime is really, I think, going to boil over,” retired Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview Monday. “You can pull up any article and see that some of these migrants are being arrested three and four and five times, over and over again, and released to commit more crime. … It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s a revolving door. And the police officers are saying, ‘Just forget it. Why bother? Why bother even making the arrest?’”
Chicago and its surrounding areas have been the target of repeated migrant crimes, including quiet suburban malls seeing groups of people who illegally entered the U.S. ripping off department stores such as Macy’s.
Since August 2022, Chicago has seen an estimated 35,000 migrants flood the city after they illegally crossed the southern border in Texas, which bussed or flew them north.
“Illinois, specifically Chicago, will not allow their police officers to contact ICE or other federal organizations because it’s a sanctuary city and a sanctuary state. So, we’re not allowed to hold individuals on ICE hold, and we’re not allowed to communicate. So, if they were in those types of federal databases, we’re not going to know. And then they arrest them, process them and release them right back in, because in most cases, the crimes that they commit do not qualify under the SAFE-T Act to hold them. They’re released from the police facility,” he said.
The Cook County Jail in Chicago. (Reuters/Jim Vondruska)
Weitzel added that many of the migrants do not make their bond court hearing, while those who do are “almost always” released back into the public with another court date.
“And remember, they’re providing false names, false dates of birth and fictitious addresses because all these migrants that were arrested in the suburbs are listing their addresses as a migrant shelter in the city of Chicago. So, none of that information is factual. So, if a warrant was ever to be put out for these individuals, that warrant is useless,” he added.
The entire process, Weitzel said, will cause police to throw up their hands and ask “why bother” arresting migrants or criminals if they land right back on the streets to re-offend.
“When the police officers say, ‘Why bother?’ citizens better listen up because there’ll be no proactive policing; no policing where officers are out looking for crimes and trying to prevent crimes, not just responding to these crimes [but] actually doing something proactive with it. And when that day happens, I don’t think the residents of Illinois really want to see the consequences,” he said.
