Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks to the Jewish United Fund’s Israel solidarity gathering on Oct. 10, 2023, in Glencoe. (Credit: Governor’s Office)

Though Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the FBI knows of “no immediate threat,” Illinois State Police and other law enforcement units are “on alert for our own synagogues and gathering places for Jews across Illinois.”

Pritzker, who is Jewish, made the announcement Tuesday morning at the Jewish United Fund’s Israel Solidarity Gathering in suburban Glencoe.

“There are many peace-loving Palestinians, and we must honor them. But Hamas? Hamas is a terrorist organization, an army of murderers backed by Iran,” Pritzker said. “The people of Israel should know that America and Illinois unequivocally stands with them in their battle to end the ongoing Hamas attacks. We stand with Israel.”

Israel declared war after a surprise attack Saturday — at the close of a Jewish holiday — by Hamas, an Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. Authorities report hundreds of deaths.

U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, a North Shore Democrat who also spoke at JUF’s event, said he was supposed to have been in Israel for a conference.

“We were supposed to be celebrating the normalization of relations between the Jewish state of Israel and the Arab nations,” Schneider said. “We were supposed to be celebrating the idea codified in the Abraham accords that Jews and Arabs belong to the land and the idea that by embracing each other Jews and Arabs can live together in peace. That is not the vision of Hamas. That is the vision of people who believe in peace. Hamas believes that Israel should be eliminated and Jews should be murdered.”

Schneider said Hamas is a “terrorist organization” that will come to recognize Oct. 7 “as the beginning of their end,” while for Israel the date is akin to the United States’ Sept. 11.

“Israel has the right, has the obligation, to defend itself,” Schneider said. “The United States, the United States Congress, the American community and each and every one of us standing here stands with Israel.”

Meanwhile in Illinois, geopolitical forces are forcing the state to grapple with a sudden influx of thousands of asylum seekers from Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is sending busloads of migrants who’ve crossed over the southern border to sanctuary cities such as Chicago.

Where to house and otherwise provide for those without money, housing and other basic necessities has increasingly become a pressure point as more migrants arrive and as temperatures are set to dip.

At a separate event on Tuesday celebrating how the state’s EDGE tax credit allowed Eli’s Cheesecake to expand its bakery by 42,000 square feet, Pritzker downplayed the possibility that during the veto session later this month, the state will come up with fresh dollars to help deal with the migrant crisis.

“I have not heard of a supplemental (budget appropriation) that will be introduced,” Pritzker said when asked about the prospect of a new allocation. “That’s certainly something the legislature might think about doing, but there are plenty of other things to consider.”

Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson last week sent a letter to President Joe Biden pleading for federal funding and organizational oversight of the situation.

The letter called the strain the migrants were putting on Illinois “untenable” and called on the federal government to coordinate where migrants are sent and to designate a point person at the Oval Office states could go to for help.

The governor described Biden’s response as having “moved quickly on a number of items” including the resumption of deporting Venezuelans who don’t qualify as legal refugees.

“Another (action by the Biden administration) is a very, very close discussion about buses that are coming here, whether some of those buses are potentially breaking the law along the way, and working with the government about the logistics of those buses,” Pritzker said. “Where would they go? Is Chicago the only place they could go, New York the only place they could go? And the White House is taking action in a way that they didn’t before. So I’m very pleased about that.”

Pritzker said Republicans are sending migrants to Chicago and other places that proactively declared themselves as immigrant sanctuaries “because they want to cause rifts, and I think we’re all doing our best to try to work with the communities where they are challenged.”

Some Chicago residents have protested plans to house migrants in their neighborhoods and park district buildings, because they say that diverts resources current residents need and displaces programs for youth and seniors.

Pritzker in 2021 signed a series of laws that promised to “establish Illinois as the most welcoming state in the nation” for immigrants.

It’s unclear how much, if any, control migrants arriving by bus or plane have in choosing Chicago as a landing spot.

“I can guarantee you that if people at the border understood how cold it will be, and that we are having trouble housing the people that are already here, they will not choose to come to Chicago, assuming that they’re the ones choosing it,” Pritzker said.