Members of the Woodford County Board are considering a resolution to make Woodford a “non-sanctuary” county, giving officials the right to deny accepting migrants. (Photo from Levin & Perconti)

A decision on how to respond to a potential influx of migrants into Woodford County will have to wait, after the County Board tabled a proposed resolution declaring Woodford a “non-sanctuary” county.  

The resolution on the April 16 County Board consent agenda would have passed without discussion but following more than an hour of public comment by 16 individuals — all but two of whom opposed the resolution — Board Member Dave Meinhold pulled the item off the consent agenda, insisting the full County Board needed to discuss the issue publicly. 

The proposal was sent back to the county’s Public Safety Committee, which will meet next on Monday, May 13.  

The non-sanctuary resolution idea first came up for discussion in March, when County Board Member Zach Ferris addressed the Public Safety Committee. He told members that any government entity seeking to pass a resolution declaring itself as non-sanctuary has to state a reason. Two counties, he said, Grundy and La Salle, recently did declare themselves non-sanctuaries.  

“We have a huge migrant crisis,” said Ferris, a member of the all-Republican County Board. 

Other cities, he said, “don’t have facilities, they don’t have shelters, they don’t have resources to house all these migrants that are coming in through our southern border.” 

He largely laid the blame on Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, saying, “Lately, Pritzker has been coming up with different ways to move migrants out of the city of Chicago.” 

He also said that since Illinois is legally a sanctuary state, a status that was established under former Gov. Bruce Rauner, care and planning needs to be done to assure that no laws are broken by law enforcement in dealing with immigrants, so that no lawsuits are engendered. 

Ferris said that initially migrants were being dispersed to counties around the Chicago area. That, he said, “basically give (state government) the chance to spread those migrants around other parts of the area, as those communities become overwhelmed with that influx.”  

Ferris said he’s been told by officials in other counties that when migrants are dropped off in counties outside Chicago, they are “always unannounced or undetected.”  

“So, we’re never gonna get a phone call from our governor or his office, saying ‘Hey, we’re shipping many migrants to your county. Be prepared, be ready.”  

Ferris said the county state’s attorney would need to write the resolution, and that “we would also need to create a plan on how to handle migrants should they arrive.” 

Any plan would state specific circumstances behind the decision. 

“It could be economic, it could be safety of the public, it could be safety for the migrants themselves,” Ferris said, noting that Grundy County had a plan in place that both would ship any migrants that arrive back to Chicago, and fine any bus company that dropped off immigrants $750 per migrant.  

“That’s one of the ways we can try and deter our governor from potentially wanting to bring migrants here,” he said. “Not only would (Grundy) be able to make money off this, but they would only spend a little bit, and basically with the math they’re finding it’s definitely beyond what they had to spend to ship ‘em out of the county.” 

Ferris said that both Grundy and LaSalle counties’ programs had been in place for several months and that neither had been legally challenged so far. He stressed the need to be prepared. 

“Even though we don’t have a migrant crisis right now, it’s better for us to be proactive than reactive,” Ferris said. “Just because we don’t have an issue now doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be one down the road.”