The four years of chaos had finally quieted, but the questions were just beginning. NBC Chicago had already exposed millions in taxpayer dollars flowing to questionable paychecks back in 2023. Now, the other shoe dropped—a new report from the Illinois Auditor General had found that contract employees were paid millions of dollars to do absolutely nothing. More than 51,000 migrants had camped on sidewalks, inside police stations, and in airports, anywhere families could claim a corner of Chicago.
When the city opened official shelters, a Kansas company called Favorite Healthcare Staffing was hired to provide relief workers. The audit revealed that the state paid $78. 5 million to this company for employees to sit on standby—not working—for nearly half a million hours. The Illinois emergency management agency paid the massive bill without questioning a single charge.
“We’re just burning money,” one official admitted. “We need to get on top of that. ”
The numbers were staggering. In 2023, former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson had already commented on similar questionable payments found in paperwork obtained by the investigative team.
Favorite’s invoices for a four-week period covered 400 relief employees who billed the city for 84 hours of work each per week. Regular pay rates ranged from $50 to $156 per hour, with overtime up to $234 an hour. Each security guard billed at a rate equivalent to $312,000 per year. One contract nurse was paid the equivalent of $836,000 annually.
“The fact that we’ve all been left in the dark about the costs per hour for staff for these facilities is insane,” Ferguson said at the time. Some Chicago aldermen pushed back hard against the exorbitant wages and what they saw as a negligent and non-transparent payment process. But the money kept flowing. The Auditor General’s report provided ten recommendations to state officials, including keeping closer tabs on billable hour contracts and timesheets, and urging Illinois emergency management and Homeland Security agencies to review contractor invoices before paying them—basic checks that most people would consider common sense.
“Any likelihood we could ever get that money back? ” a reporter asked. “I think it basically was torched,” came the reply. “Some of these recommendations were just common sense.
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“Bill before you pay it,” the reporter noted. “Yeah, most people do that. ”
But the money wasn’t the only issue. Many Chicago residents knew at the time that something deeper was happening—their vote was being diluted.
During a town hall, one resident confronted the city leadership directly. “NPR reported from August of last year to December of this year, they will spend $252 million on the migrants. 17,000 migrants coming to this city. If we just break that in half and they become families, you got 8,500 families.
Hispanics have 3. 5 children. I’m submitting to you in one generation, just one generation, the black vote will be null. They will have an additional 24,000 people on the voting rolls along with the Hispanic population already here.
They’re playing chess and you all are playing checkers. You are damning our youth, our next generation to poverty by you all doing these political speeches. One generation, our youth, our vote will be null in all these six sanctuary cities. And what are you going to do about that?
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Applause filled the room. The response from the official was measured but deflective. “The first thing we have to do is make sure that those that are coming here unlawfully stop. I don’t have anything to do with persons’ reproduction levels.
If people want to have more children, you certainly can. Two-thirds of our hemisphere speaks Spanish. They’re not Americans in general. There’s a natural balance of people that are non-English speaking in our own hemisphere that can walk up here all the time.
We can’t lose our land and be moved off of it because of government policy. I am focused on the housing issues because housing and jobs is what keeps us as residents of this district and in the residents of Illinois. ”
When Mayor Brandon Johnson was called to Capitol Hill to account for the spending, the confrontation intensified. Reporter: “You’re the mayor of Chicago.
Do you think that your residents or the residents of your state should be paying for that more than they should be paying for their own needs, their own roads, their own public safety? ”
“The people of Chicago elected me as the 57th mayor of the city of Chicago, and we serve all the residents of the city of Chicago,” Johnson replied. But that service came with a price tag. Since September 2022, the city had paid out $638.
7 million in vendor contracts for new arrivals. Johnson claimed the budget allocation was only about 1% of the city’s budget over four years—roughly $625 million. But according to vendor payment data, the real numbers were even higher, and that figure didn’t include the cost of migrants traveling out of state. Nearly $850,000 in taxpayer dollars had been spent moving migrants out of Chicago by January 2024.
Illinois Republican Darin LaHood confronted the mayor directly. “You’ve spent $300 million of taxpayer money on illegal immigrants. You’re putting the interest of illegal immigrants above the interest of taxpayers in Chicago. ”
Johnson fell back on the Welcoming City Ordinance.
“Our sister agencies or city departments, we do not seek the status of any individual that is seeking service,” he said. This report comes out now just in time for the election. Johnson has to decide whether he’s going to run for re-election in 2027. This gives Chicago residents time to mull over the numbers, draw their conclusions, and decide whether they want to continue with a mayor whose approval rating hovers below 10%—or try something different.
At the end of the day, residents are left with two intertwined questions: not only was their money taken, but their political power was being diluted. They were being stripped of both their wealth and their voice. And all the while, those responsible called it humanitarian aid.
