The highly anticipated House hearing Wednesday on sanctuary cities at which Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson testified offered more heat than light.
Johnson’s primary job as the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee attacked him (and fellow Democratic Mayors Eric Adams of New York, Mike Johnston of Denver and Michelle Wu of Boston) was to keep his cool. First, do no harm.
In that we believe Chicago’s mayor succeeded, and for that we are glad.
It took self-discipline not to rise to the bait when performative GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina barked at Johnson, “This is why you have a 6% approval rating — because you suck at answering questions,” or when Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas asked Johnson about recent revelations regarding gifts he’d accepted as mayor and declared, “This raises serious ethical concerns.”
The hearing itself relitigated the Republican narrative that cities run by Democratic mayors are impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts and fomenting crime within their borders. All the mayors, Johnson included, were effective in arguing that their cities’ law enforcement officers cooperate routinely with the feds in enforcing criminal warrants for people in the country without authorization. In fact, as Johnson pointed out under friendly questioning by U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who represents a large chunk of Chicago’s suburbs, it was a 2017 state law signed by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that set forth that requirement.
Republican members of Congress castigated the city leaders for not allowing their police officers to hand over those they suspect of being here illegally to the feds in the absence of a warrant. Some of these lawmakers went so far as to say the mayors, including Johnson, were violating federal law. One of them, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna — this was theater, remember — said she’d be making criminal referrals of all the mayors to Attorney General Pam Bondi right after the hearing. (For her part, Bondi tweeted that she would now be amping up enforcement efforts in Boston.)
The mayors, including Johnson, responded that their police officers have enough to do to keep their city’s streets as safe as possible without getting involved in immigration enforcement, which is indisputably a federal responsibility. They also made the case, persuasively, that involving city law enforcement in steps leading to deportation undermines public trust and leads to lack of cooperation from witnesses and ordinary residents that police must have to solve crimes.
The Democratic mayors foundered at times, too. Johnson employed the same talking points repeatedly and failed at times to directly answer questions when he could have done so. It was a workmanlike performance, but in such a high-risk setting, that was all that was needed.
The mayors skirted questions they could have answered more honestly on the failures of the administration of President Joe Biden in handling the surge of migrants at the southern border. After all, it was that influx that allowed Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas to send buses full of asylum-seekers to Chicago and other cities, putting immense pressure on municipal budgets. Memo to the mayors: Biden is out of office now; it’s OK to be honest about that clear failure.
The clear star among the mayors was Boston’s Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants born in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood and raised in northwest suburban Barrington before attending Harvard University. The 40-year-old mayor, who gave birth to a daughter seven weeks ago, parried effectively with the GOP critics, answered questions directly when her peers wouldn’t, and at a few key points even turned the tables on her GOP adversaries.
Responding to Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Wu said, “The false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals or immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm. That is actually what is undermining safety in our communities.”
She was in a good position to be aggressive, since the number of homicides in Boston fell last year to just 24, the lowest since 1957, according to Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox.
Chicago, too, has seen homicide numbers drop over the last few years. But violence here remains unacceptably high by any reckoning; 24 homicides a year would be a dream.
Johnson’s most anxious moment came toward the end of the marathon when U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Republican representing parts of Illinois including Rockford and Peoria, spotlighted the 6.6% approval rating for Johnson in a recent poll and asked him if he had any “remorse” for his policy decisions.
This page has, of course, been critical of many of those policies, many of them revolving around managing city finances, but Johnson remained disciplined, stuck to his talking points and then at the end of the exchange asked for LaHood’s help in Washington. There was deftness on both sides.
For all its challenges and flaws, Chicago is one of the world’s great cities. For all the flak he took and all the dissatisfaction Chicagoans feel at how he’s governed, Brandon Johnson on this day did nothing to undermine that truth.
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