Brian Urlacher doesn’t like the idea of the Bears leaving Soldier Field — no matter where they end up.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Indiana or somewhere in Illinois, I can’t picture them leaving Soldier Field,” the Pro Football Hall of Famer told Fox News last week, managing to criticize the state’s immigration policy along the way.
Urlacher blamed Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois legislators, saying that “you do what you have to do to keep the Bears there.” Earlier this month, the Bears said they planned to press forward with a proposed site in Hammond, Indiana, though they vowed to continue talking to Illinois politicians.
The former linebacker acknowledged that Soldier Field was “already off the table” this year, pointing to Arlington Heights as a valid option.
“Find a way to keep them there …” he said. “They just don’t care.”
He then tried to connect lawmakers’ inabilities to reach a property tax funding deal with the Bears to money the state spends as part of its immigration policies.
“You look at all the money they’ve given to illegal immigrants and the money they’ve set aside for that, it’s like $2.5, $3 billion that they’ve spent on the illegal immigrants,” Urlacher claimed. “That money could be for the Bears, could be trying to keep them, not for the Bears, but trying to keep their stadium in town, instead of keeping people that aren’t supposed to be in our country here.”