Migrants moved to Park District field houses, as South Shore residents criticize city for shelter plans
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to house some of the city’s surging population of migrants at a former high school in the South Shore neighborhood prompted shouts by frustrated residents who said they were left out of the planning process at a packed meeting Thursday night.
“I have nothing against the migrants,” said lifelong resident Marjorie Love, 85, who lives across from the closed South Shore High School, which the city proposed to house new arrivals. “But if you have 250 people you need to house, you need to find another location.”
The meeting comes as the city moves dozens of migrants from police stations to temporary “respite centers” set up at public facilities, including Chicago Park District field houses where some spring programming has to be relocated to make way for the temporary shelter and a shuttered Streeterville hotel off the Magnificent Mile.
Hundreds of migrants seeking asylum have arrived in Chicago in recent weeks, adding to the thousands who are already here after they began arriving last fall. City officials say the most recent influx has exhausted resources and filled shelters to capacity.
There were 207 families residing inside Chicago police stations Thursday morning, said Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, citing an unofficial count shared with him by community groups. Dozens of migrants were shown sleeping shoulder to shoulder on the lobby floor of Rogers Park’s 24th District police station in a photo shared on social media and confirmed with police sources by the Tribune.
“These are families with children,” Sigcho-Lopez said.
Mayoral spokesperson Ryan Johnson said 80 asylum-seekers are arriving per day, according to 311 calls. Sigcho-Lopez said the number might be even higher and will likely rise as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott resumes sending migrants to Chicago via bus and as Title 42 pandemic-era federal border restrictions expire next week.
The migrant arrivals are part of a “national humanitarian crisis,” Johnson wrote in an email to the Tribune.
“We will continue collaborating with community-based organizations and local and community leaders to support those in need while also addressing the concerns of the local communities,” Johnson wrote.
Over 8,000 migrants have arrived since Abbott began sending migrants to Chicago via bus last August, Lightfoot wrote in a letter criticizing Abbott’s decision to resume the buses Sunday.
The wave of migrants arriving in Chicago in the fall pushed the city to find new shelter facilities. However, the housing efforts were at times met with opposition. When city leaders first sought to reopen the shuttered Wadsworth Elementary School in Woodlawn to house migrants in December, they faced pushback and protest from residents and leaders.
Many felt disrespected by the city’s plan to repurpose a school local residents had fought to keep open, Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, said at the time. Two residents blocked a bus as migrants moved into the temporary shelter in February.
The city planned to house 250 migrants at the school as it opened the shelter, the Tribune reported then. Now, almost 500 migrants are staying at the repurposed elementary school, a spokesperson for Taylor’s office said Thursday. The shelter’s population has been at the higher level “for the past few weeks,” Johnson said.
“The City has been planning for an influx of new arrivals since [being] given notice of the federal May 11 deadline,” he wrote.
Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, said the proposed shelter affects not just her ward but the entire South Side of Chicago. The meeting was supposed to be held at the shuttered high school, 7627 S. Constance Ave., but it was moved to International College Preparatory High on 75th Street because there were so many people planning to attend.
Community members raised their voices as city officials tried to speak. They lined up to ask questions.
“We recognize this is a humanitarian crisis, but while this crisis may constitute an emergency for the city of Chicago, it does not constitute an emergency for the South Shore community,” Harris said.
This community just doesn’t have the capacity to help, said Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th.
The mayor’s office is collaborating with city departments, aldermen, community organizers and leaders to identify new temporary housing sites where arriving migrants can wait for shelter placement, Johnson said.
The Magnificent Mile’s Inn of Chicago hotel building at 162 E. Ohio St. is being used to house migrants, he confirmed. The Streeterville hotel closed in 2020, according to its website.
City officials have repeatedly stated they have run out of available resources to care for the asylum-seekers amid a purported tenfold increase in arrivals.
“We simply have no more shelters, spaces or resources,” Lightfoot wrote in her letter to Abbott.
Migrants have sought shelter at police stations across the city. Dozens slept on the hard floors of Rogers Park’s 24th District police station this week. In the photo shared on Twitter, they filled the station’s lobby, wrapped in blankets.
But in the early afternoon Thursday, the migrants were moved out of the station. They had been moved to the neighborhood’s Leone Beach Park, officers at the station said.
Migrants are now being housed at Chicago Park District field houses at both Leone Beach Park and Brands Park in Avondale.
The Park District will move spring programming from Brands Park to other sites as asylum-seekers are temporarily housed in the park’s field house, district spokesperson Michele Lemons said.
At Leone Beach Park on Thursday afternoon, migrants arrived on school buses and entered the field house. Families with young children, many from Venezuela, walked into the building with trash bags holding their possessions slung over their shoulders. They carried pillows, blankets, diapers and folders with their immigration papers inside.
“Walk forward and find a seat,” volunteers said in Spanish, quickly ushering them along.
Lourie Hasbrook, a member of St. Gertrude Parish, stood outside with a backpack of children’s underwear and crayons, but wasn’t allowed in the building. She said she planned to call Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, to see what could be done.
“It’s appalling,” she said. “I’ve heard the conditions here are bad, but I don’t know that they’re worse than the police station where everyone was just on the floor against walls.”
Hasbrook said she understands the city is overwhelmed, but she knows there are a lot of people who want to help. She wondered why migrants weren’t allowed outside, and why there weren’t tables and chairs set up in the lawn.
“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said. “This is just depressing.”
Marianny Rodriguez, 34, said she was brought to the field house last night from a police station, though she didn’t know which one. She said conditions at the field house are about the same as they were at the stations, but she noted that migrants are receiving food at the new site. There were about 48 people inside, she said.
“We’re under a roof at least, and we’re grateful for that,” she told the Tribune in Spanish.
Jessica Chirino, 31, and her husband, Jhonny Caicado, entered the building with their 5-year-old daughter. The Tribune spoke to Chirino and her family at the 16th District police station over a week ago.
All media and volunteers were told to stay outside the caution tape strung up around the building.
Women and children occasionally wandered outside to stare at Lake Michigan. They stayed a few minutes, then went back inside.
Ald. Gil Villegas, 36th, said that many asylum-seekers first go to the Cook County health clinic in Belmont Cragin for checkups when they arrive in Chicago. They have often traveled hundreds of miles to get to the Mexican border before they arrive in the country, he said.
“They’re cared for in the border towns, but that care needs to continue when they come to Chicago,” he said.
Housing and tending to the thousands of arriving migrants is a lot of work for the city, he noted as he praised Chicago’s care for families and single individuals.
The city has never had to deal with a wave of new arrivals quite like this, said Ald. Felix Cardona, 31st. If aldermen don’t continue monitoring the flow of migrants, he said, the situation will get out of control.
“We all have to work together to address this humanitarian issue. We’re all working on this on top of doing our aldermanic duties,” Cardona said.
Sigcho-Lopez said he knows city officials have said Chicago’s shelters are at capacity. He questioned why the city didn’t develop stronger plans to anticipate more arriving migrants after the wave of asylum-seekers ebbed in the winter.
“They cannot say, ‘These issues could not have been foreseen,’” he said.
The Pilsen alderman said people in his community have tried “for months” to develop proposals to house migrants in the area. The neighborhood is better equipped to handle migrants because of its many bilingual services, he said.
But the mayor’s office hasn’t worked with his office or the City Council’s Latino Caucus to house migrants, he said.
“To my surprise, the administration continues to push for areas where they continue to see backlash,” he said, adding he hears that some areas where migrants are being housed are not consulted or prepared for the arrivals.
Many of the migrant shelters “almost feel like detention centers,” Sigcho-Lopez said. The migrants need schools, mental health services and bilingual support, he added.
He called on the city to better coordinate with neighborhood leaders as it places migrants in shelters and for the state to provide more funding to the response.
“This administration is not addressing this with a comprehensive plan,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We’re just reacting.”
