On Wednesday's broadcast of MSNBC's “The Reid Out,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) vowed to “do everything we can to protect illegal immigrants.” But he also said the state “has a very inhumane transportation problem” from Texas to Illinois.
“I want to be clear that there are certain circumstances in which the federal and state governments should work together to allow deportation,” Pritzker said. “An example of this is when someone is convicted of a violent crime. “It will be done,” he said. But they're talking about rounding up law-abiding illegal immigrants in this country, many of whom work and pay taxes and receive no benefit for those taxes. No, I might add. …So, look, I'm going to do everything I can to protect illegal immigrants. They are residents of our state. And I also think it's clear that what they're going to do in our state, the federal government, we need to make sure that it's actually within federal or state law. ”
He added:[W]When we had this issue of the very inhumane transportation of migrants from Texas to Illinois, of course I went to the federal government and said we need a place to house them because we might run out of space. I did. . Can you give us a place that the federal government might own that we can use? And there's really nothing like that. ”
Pritzker also said the taxes paid by illegal immigrants are “very interesting, as you can imagine, for the country and for the state of Illinois.”
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