Illinois NAACP President Facing Calls to Step Down After Referring to Immigrants as ‘Savages’, Home Invaders

The president of the Illinois chapter of the NAACP is facing calls to step down after calling immigrants “savages” and home invaders earlier this year.

Teresa Haley made the comments during a Zoom call with other NAACP state leaders in October, according to video footage of the call which was released by former DuPage County NAACP President Patrick Watson on Dec. 12.

Footage allegedly shows Ms. Haley speaking about the influx of immigrants into the United States and specifically Chicago in recent years, which state leaders have warned is “overwhelming” Democrat-controlled Illinois and becoming untenable.

The woman, identified as Ms. Haley, discusses the homeless crisis among the black population, stating that black residents have been forced to sleep on the streets and are not being given the same kind of help or aid as immigrants.

The Illinois NAACP president goes on to warn others to “get ready” for an influx of immigrants, saying, “They’re up to 80,000 immigrants on the West Side of Chicago and the South Side.”

“People are even renting out abandoned buildings and allowing them to live up in there, and that’s inhumane because they don’t have the sewage, the plumbing, the draining, but to get them off the streets, they’re just housing them anywhere,” she said.

“Springfield, Peoria, Bloomington, Kankakee, just get ready if you declared yourself to be a safe haven or a safe place for immigrants to come, because they are shopping around, and the busloads are coming,” she continued.

“Black people have been on the streets forever and ever, and nobody cares,” while the government is rushing to provide housing and other services to immigrants, she said.

“These immigrants have come over here, they’ve been raping people, they’ve been breaking into homes, they’re like savages as well. They don’t speak the language, and they look at us like we were crazy, because we were the only people in America who were brought over here against our wills, and we’re slaves,” Ms. Haley concluded.

Homelessness Crisis

Chicago’s illegal immigrants are eligible to receive up to $9,000 in rental assistance under a newly introduced state-run program, which also provides funding to help furnish homes.

An estimated 68,440 homeless Americans are living on the streets of Chicago as of 2023, according to the Chicago Coalition of the Homeless.

Speaking to The Daily Beast Wednesday, Mr. Watson said the meeting between Ms. Haley and other NAACP state leaders took place on Oct. 26.

Ms. Haley had presided over the conference, he told the publication, adding that her comments amounted to “hate speech.”

“The comments came up when some of the Chicago-based presidents started to talk about the migrant crisis, the funding that was going into neighborhoods, and they had differing opinions from my own. It’s OK to have differing opinions,” Mr. Watson said.

“They had different opinions about some of the resources that were going to the community, that resources weren’t going towards individuals within the community, even though those resources are coming from different sources… That’s OK to have a different opinion. But President Haley engaged in what I would call absolute hate speech.”

Mr. Watson has resigned from the NAACP in protest of Ms. Haley’s comments, he told the publication, adding that he believes Ms. Haley should also step down.

Calls to Step Down

“We live with the horror of persons being shot, shot at, exploited, shunned, burned out of houses and homes, and murdered due to being immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, being Black, surviving being Black and male in hostile environments,” he said. “A person in a leadership position should exercise care of her heart and words and not be flippant when speaking about how the LGBTQIA community wants to be described and acknowledged.”

As well as being the president of the Illinois chapter of the NAACP, Ms. Haley runs a company that provides training programs to help individuals grow personally and professionally, according to its website.

A biography on the website describes her as “a longtime passionate civil rights activist, public policy advocate, professional trainer, and dynamic speaker,” who “devotes herself to serving God, family, and community.”

Ms. Haley became the first female president of the Illinois NAACP State Conference in 2015 and is also serving her sixth consecutive term as president of the Springfield Branch NAAC, according to the biography.

Responding to the newly-emerged video footage of Ms. Haley from the October meeting, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker—who in October wrote to the White House asking it to provide more resources to the state after the arrival of over 15,000 immigrants —said her comments were “reprehensible.”

“Reprehensible remarks, I would hope that she would apologize for the remarks. I also think that people should recognize that immigrants to this country are all around us,” Mr. Pritzker told Chicago’s WCIA this week.

Ms. Haley denied the comments made in the video on Wednesday, telling Chicago ABC station WLS-TV that with artificial intelligence, “anything is possible.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Ms. Haley for further comment.