* Leigh Giangreco and Justin Laurence at Crain’s…

Illinois and Cook County have pledged about $250 million in funding to aid the ongoing migrant crisis, but the city says it never committed to provide its own share of $71 million.

State, county and city officials identified $321 million needed through 2024 to support ongoing shelter and support services, according to a Feb. 15 state and county joint statement.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office told Crain’s the “city never made that commitment” to provide the additional $71 million.

Mary Ann Ahern…

Earlier this month, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle met with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at City Hall to discuss the need for more funding.

Multiple sources tell NBC Chicago that all three agreed on what it would take to prepare that funding, but the mayor later distanced the city from the agreement.

*** UPDATE *** Jordan Abudayyeh rebuts…

After a month of meetings where the state, county and city worked to assemble a long term funding plan, it was widely reported that the Governor attended a meeting at City Hall on February 5th.

At that meeting the state, county and city agreed that an additional $321 million was needed to sustain current operations to continue providing much needed humanitarian aid.

The Governor agreed to ask the General Assembly for $182 million to cover more than half of the additional funding, while it was agreed that the county and city would go to the county board and city council for the rest of the funding.

With the understanding of those commitments the staffs from each office, including the Mayor’s Office, met to discuss making the joint funding announcement and briefing our respective legislative bodies.

By Wednesday of that week the city pulled out of a staff level planning meeting and by the weekend the Mayor called the Governor to notify him the city would not be a part of the joint announcement.

* From Isabel…

* Sun-Times | To trace the origins of busing migrants to Chicago, start with Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz: Pritzker said he worried about what would happen after May 11, 2023 — a day “burned in my head.” That was the expiration date for Title 42, the federal coronavirus health order enacted under the Trump administration to allow U.S. authorities to quickly send migrants back to Mexico. “We all knew that that could mean that there would be a big flow into the country — not knowing if the governor of Texas was going to now flood them into Chicago or to some other location,” Pritzker said.

* WIFR | Winnebago Co. Board discusses resolution for potential migrant crisis: Leaving the floor open to the public, board members took input from residents on how the situation should be handled. Board member Paul Arena says the point of the discussion was to make it clear that the discussed resolution applies only if migrants are abandoned in the county en route to Chicago. “We hope that it eases the public’s mind. That they are made confident that number one we are responsibly using their tax money and secondly to people that are concerned about the welfare of migrants, that we are going to give them proper care, should this happen.”

* CNN | I asked criminologists about immigration and crime in the US. Their answers may surprise you: Charis Kubrin and Graham Ousey literally wrote the book on immigration and crime. They’ve been researching these issues for decades and analyzed numerous studies for their 2023 book, “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” […] Ousey: Human beings commit crime in pretty much all societies across the globe. But the bottom line is what gets lost in those anecdotal stories — those lead you to a flashpoint of negativity in which you ignore all the potentially good things that immigrants bring to our society. And it’s frustrating to try to bring evidence to the table and try to contextualize things and put it statistically when you’re arguing against this flashpoint that allows people to more or less kind of ignore everything else.

* NYT | Big Burden of Migrant Influx Strains Denver: In his first six months in office last summer, the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, managed to get more than 1,200 homeless people off the streets and into housing. That seemed like a fitting feat for a city that prides itself on its compassion. It would turn out to be a footnote compared with the humanitarian crisis that Denver would soon face as thousands of migrants flooded the city, many of them bused from the southern border by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and almost all of them in need of shelter and support.

* Axios | Most Americans say the feds are doing a bad job with the migrant crisis: About 80% of Americans say the U.S. government is doing a bad job dealing with the large number of migrants at the border, including 45% who say it is doing a very bad job, a new survey finds. […] About 78% of respondents say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country at the U.S.-Mexico border is either a crisis (45%) or a major problem (32%), according to the Pew Research Center survey.

* CBS | How much is Massachusetts spending to shelter and feed migrants and homeless? I-Team obtains vendor contracts: Records obtained by the I-Team show the state has 17 contracts for housing totaling more than $116 million. Those contracts are only for fiscal year 2024 and end in June. […] In some cases, the hotels are collecting money from the state for three meals a day, $16 for breakfast, $17 for lunch and $31 for dinner. That means $64 dollars a day per person.

* Wired | YouTube Livestreamers Made Money ‘Hunting’ for Migrants Along the US Border: “Anybody in there,” said Dennis Yarbery, one of the YouTubers, as he approached a migrant camp at night in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, near the border last week. Yarbery was livestreaming to thousands of people. “Come out, come out wherever you are.” Yarbery is one of three men who split off from the Take Our Border Back convoy in Texas and, according to their livestreams, spent days driving along the border in Arizona and California to harass migrants and volunteers with nonprofit groups.