Legal immigration surge putting strain on emergency services; leaders turn to Congress for help

SPRINGFIELD — Leaders in Springfield want federal help to deal with a huge immigration surge that’s threatening their ability to keep the city safe.

City leaders say the population has jumped by 20,000 in about three years. The increase is making it tough for emergency services to provide care and protection for long-term and new residents.

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“We’re at 9,790 calls for our firefighters and that was as of the end of June,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said.

Rue said he’s not surprised by those numbers after the population increase due to a Haitian immigration surge., but said the city is already 11 under their mandated full-strength of 130 firefighters. City leaders believe they need 140 to meet the population growth.

Police also have a mandated strength of 130 officers, but there are only 118 now. Leaders believe there also need to be 140 officers due to the surge.

“The folks that are in our community do not come with resources,” Rue said. “The Federal Immigration Policy, the Border Policy has been broken.”

As reported on News Center 7 at 5:00, City Manager Bryan Heck said the city is not seeing any additional funding with its increased population.

“We actually saw a cut in some of our Federal Entitlement Programs,” Heck said.

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Both Rue and Heck emphasized that all of the city’s Haitian immigrants are here legally and are refugees under temporary protected status, but they’re so frustrated that they wrote a letter to Washington, D.C.

Part of that letter was read at a committee hearing by Senator JD Vance. Springfield leaders hope it translates to help for emergency services, hospitals, housing, and even translation services.

“We want our community to be successful, but again the policies at the federal level are setting us up to fail,” Heck said.

Leaders now want to see actions.

“We appreciate their giving voice to it, but we need some action,” Rue said.

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