How much has Chicago spent on services for undocumented immigrants since 2020, broken down by year?
Executive summary
Available reporting and public dashboards show widely varying totals for Chicago-area spending tied to migrants and undocumented immigrants since 2020: municipal vendor-contract counts exceed $600 million according to ABC7’s reporting (noting $638.7 million in vendor contracts since Sept. 2022) [1], while investigative and advocacy outlets report figures from “nearly $300 million” through about $400 million for the city across two years [2] [3]. State-level tallies pushed by policy groups and state reporting claim billions in Illinois spending on migrants through 2025—commonly cited as roughly $2.5 billion [4] [5]—but those figures aggregate multiple programs and fiscal years and include health-care and other state expenditures beyond city budgets [6] [7].
1. Why totals differ so much: different governments, programs and timeframes
Numbers vary because sources mix city, county and state outlays, different fiscal-year definitions, and different program scopes: Chicago’s “migrant spending” dashboard and contract lists cover city vendor payments and shelter contracts (reported as $638.7 million since Sept. 2022 by ABC7’s I‑Team) [1] [3], while state-level reports include Medicaid‑like programs and other statewide supports that add hundreds of millions more and are tracked in separate portals like the Illinois Comptroller’s asylum‑seekers page [7] [6]. Advocacy and policy shops often aggregate multiple line items (healthcare, shelter, county and state spending) across FY2023–FY2025, producing multi‑billion dollar totals [4] [8].
2. City of Chicago: reported contract and dashboard totals
Investigations using the city’s own data show Chicago paid more than $400 million over a two‑year span on migrant responses, and ABC7 reported $638.7 million in vendor contracts for new‑arrival migrants since September 2022 [3] [1]. Other outlets pegged the city’s cumulative spending “approaching $300 million” as of March 2024, noting about $215 million spent after Mayor Brandon Johnson took office in May 2023—illustrating rapid growth and dependence on how the cut‑off date is chosen [2].
3. Cook County and state contributions change the arithmetic
Cook County committed at least $70 million in one announced funding plan and Illinois pledged multiple pots (e.g., $160M, $182M, and prior $478M cited in reporting) that feed into statewide totals; combining those with city outlays produces much larger numbers cited by state policy groups and news outlets [9] [6]. WTTW reported Pritzker’s FY2025 proposal would add $182 million to earlier commitments, and the state had already recorded hundreds of millions in program spending—highlighting why state totals exceed city totals [6].
4. Statewide “billions” claims reflect program aggregation and projections
Policy groups and some news stories report Illinois spending on migrants will reach roughly $2.5 billion by end of 2025 or cite $2.84 billion for FY2023–FY2025; those figures largely combine Medicaid‑like health benefits, shelter and support programs across multiple fiscal years and sometimes include projected shortfalls, not only actual city invoices [4] [10]. Fox32 and Wirepoints also use aggregated state figures emphasizing health care as the largest component [5] [8].
5. Transparency limits and litigation that affects totals
Reporting flags gaps in publicly available contract details—NBC found the city dashboard omits some contractor and lease‑owner names and plaintiffs in a lawsuit have sought more detailed disclosures—meaning publicly reported totals may understate or obscure specific vendor recipients even while summarizing aggregate spend [3]. The Illinois Comptroller’s asylum‑seekers portal exists to track state payments but explicitly warns it may not be exhaustive [7].
6. Competing perspectives: fiscal alarmism vs. management/compassion frames
Fiscal conservatives and some state lawmakers present the combined state/city totals as evidence of unsustainable spending and call for policy rollbacks (examples: state policy pieces, lawmakers’ statements) [4] [11]. City and state officials frame commitments as emergency response to an “unprecedented” influx, seeking federal help and adjusting budgets [6] [9]. Both sides use overlapping numbers but select different scopes to bolster their case.
7. What reporters can and cannot say from the available sources
From the provided reporting you can reliably cite: Chicago’s vendor contracts figure (about $638.7M since Sept. 2022) [1]; investigative summaries that place two‑year city spending “more than $400M” [3]; March 2024 estimates of roughly $299M since 2022 [2]; and state‑level aggregated projections of roughly $2.5B by end of 2025 [4] [5]. Available sources do not mention a clean, year‑by‑year city breakdown for every year since 2020 in a single official table—those detailed annual city figures are not found in the current reporting and dashboards summarized here [3] [7].
8. How to get the year‑by‑year breakdown you asked for
To produce a defensible, per‑year Chicago figure since 2020 you must: (a) query the City of Chicago’s migration/migrant spending dashboard and vendor‑contract portal for calendar and fiscal year exports (city investigators and ABC7 used those sources) [3] [1]; (b) reconcile fiscal vs. calendar years; and (c) decide whether to include county and state disbursements [6]. The Illinois Comptroller’s asylum‑seekers portal and city contract reports are the primary official sources; current news summaries cite but do not fully reconcile them [7] [3].
Limitations: this account uses only the specified sources and therefore cannot confirm figures beyond what those articles and portals report; where detailed year‑by‑year municipal line‑items are absent in those sources, I note that absence rather than invent numbers [3] [7].