Like those who reject the advice of their elders and are forced to learn the lessons of life the hard way, millions of Americans who ignored warnings about sanctuary cities are now awakening to an inescapable truth: Self-serving politicians who sold them this bill of goods have wrecked their once-great communities with overcrowding, crime, and budget deficits.

Make no mistake, sanctuary cities were failing prior to 2021. It took the wrecking ball of the Joe Biden presidency, however, for the failure of surrendered borders and sanctuary policies to be obvious to even the most doctrinaire progressives.

Full-throated opposition to these noxious policies is now coming from some unlikely places. Chief among them is Chicago, a dark blue metropolis long captive to Democratic Party machine politics. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s prioritization of illegal aliens over legal residents has cratered his support and turned city council meetings into viral social media clips. 

At a meeting on Dec. 2, one Chicagoan after another came to the microphone to blast Johnson for ignoring their needs in favor of foreign nationals there illegally.   

“One thing that Chicago people know very well is how to spot a scam, and the scam has been exposed,” said one resident. Another demanded an audit of city spending and predicted Johnson would be convicted and sent to prison.

These were not members of the local chamber of commerce or a well-heeled country club. They appeared to be working-class people, almost all of them African American, who have been the foundation of the Democratic Party voting bloc in Chicago for more than half a century.  

So why are they in full revolt? Since the calamitous term of Johnson’s just-as-bad predecessor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s legal residents have endured an almost daily barrage of insults as city government welcomed more illegal aliens and lavished scarce resources on them. In now viral images, migrants were seen sleeping on the floors of the city’s police stations, O’Hare International airport, and other public places. Johnson, named America’s worst sanctuary mayor earlier this year by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, has saddled his residents with the bills that come due with importing poverty from outside the U.S.—a colossal price tag his city cannot absorb.

From the start of Johnson’s New Arrivals Mission in August 2022, the city has spent $574.5 million to provide illegal foreign nationals there with food, shelter, housing, medical care, education, and more. This comes at a time when Chicago is facing a $1 billion budget shortfall and is considering a $60 million property tax increase to help make up the difference.

While he blames the arrival of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s migrant buses for the problem and admits the situation in Chicago is unsustainable, Johnson has done nothing to deter illegal aliens from coming to his city. Despite the narrative that border crossers are largely uneducated peasants, they are surprisingly informed about which American cities have sanctuary policies and offer generous benefits to noncitizens. Even if Abbott had never sent a single bus to Chicago, Johnson’s sanctuary virtue signaling would have attracted illegal aliens there in droves anyway.  

In New York City, which has also been ravaged by the consequences of sanctuary policies, the situation has gotten so bad that change may be inevitable. Mayor Eric Adams, who mostly supported sanctuary policies at the beginning of his mayoralty, seems ready for a course correction. He recently said he is open to deporting illegal aliens in his city who are charged with crimes, which is heresy in that far-left sanctuary city and a departure from his previous position of waiting for convictions before deporting criminal aliens.

As further evidence of his position shift, Adams said he is planning to meet with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, to discuss the new administration’s plans for enhanced deportations.

What is going on here? As it took more than 70 years of communism in practice before the Soviet Union collapsed, so has it taken several decades of sanctuary policies in the United States before Americans could see for themselves what a spectacular failure they are. People were willing to give sanctuary politicians and their lofty rhetoric the benefit of the doubt until reality rudely intruded. Now the accumulated failure of decades can no longer be hidden. Sanctuary policies bring squalor, crime, greater competition for resources and insolvency. Who wants to live with those consequences?

To be sure, there will always be a significant number of idealistic people who are personally unaffected by sanctuary policies who will therefore continue to support them. As the recent presidential election demonstrated, however, those ideas have reached their high-water mark and are now in retreat. And that is a good thing for all Americans, even if some of them can’t see it.