Grundy County Board’s Law and Justice committee reviews migrant bus ordinance

The Grundy County Board’s law and justice committee reviewed a migrant bussing ordinance during its meeting on Tuesday, which will appear on the agenda for a vote at the next county board meeting on Tuesday.

The county’s version of this ordinance falls in line with ordinances already issued Morris and other municipalities.

Committee Chair Drew Muffler said Grundy County was ahead of the curve. The board declared Grundy County a “non-sanctuary county” in its December meeting, and weeks later had signs posted on Interstate 55 warning drivers of buses full of refugees shipped to Illinois from Texas to keep driving.

“If you saw some of the clips from village board meetings last night, I believe Joliet, Hinsdale and Woodstock and a couple others, they adopted ordinances that had this very same language,” Muffler said.

County Board Chair Chris Balkema responded to a question from board member Caleb Counterman, who asked about continuing using the signs on I-55.

Balkema said the signs were done at the time because there was a sense of urgency in the wake of a bus of 30 or 40 migrants being dropped off in Kankakee.

“Instead of calling any special meetings, we capitalized on the non-sanctuary status that we’d passed at that point a couple of weeks ago, and said ‘ok, what do we do if migrants show up?’,” Balkema said. “So, tier one of our two step approach was to keep them moving. None of the buses coming out of Texas had a destination in Grundy County. They all had a destination of Chicago.”

Muffler said he’s seen migrants dropped off himself in Downtown Hinsdale, groups of people huddled up in blankets next to the train station.

State’s Attorney Russ Baker said he used bus ordinances from targeted cities like Rosemont, which has many hotels and convention centers and Aurora, which has a large Hispanic community, to create the ordinance. He said these were two cities that were ahead of the curve in a matter similar to Grundy County.

“In our own, it’s pretty simple,” Baker said. “It’s no stopping, standing, parking and discharging of passengers on unscheduled inner-city buses. We don’t have a busline. We don’t have a railway. It’s tantamount to if you want to drop them off in Grundy County anywhere, it’s pretty much dropping them off in a cornfield.”

Baker said Texas has shown somewhat good intentions in bussing migrants in with money to pay for Metra passes.

“They’re trying to get them to where they’re going to be taken care of, and you’re not targeting anywhere like here that doesn’t have the infrastructure or support to do it,” Baker said. “But we’re trying to plan for contingencies in case it goes south from there. Chicago’s already saying no more buses.”

Baker said the original intergovernmental resolution with Grundy County and the City of Morris was always created with the intention that it would cover Minooka, Coal City and the other cities in the county.

Like other ordinances passed in other local governments, this one would carry a $750 fine for each passenger illegally brought to Grundy County and give the county the ability to impound the bus. It also gives the police the ability to charge them with anything else still chargeable within the statutes of the state.