Naperville has a plan should asylum-seekers arrive but officials aren’t seeking them out

On Sept. 7, 2022, dozens of migrant families were transported from a shelter in Chicago to a hotel in Burr Ridge — without village officials’ knowledge beforehand. A few days later, two CTA buses carrying about 90 migrants arrived at a La Quinta Inn in Elk Grove Village, again with little prior warning to local leaders.

Watching his suburban neighbors closely, former Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico didn’t want to face a similar moment of uncertainty. He decided the city needed a plan.

More than a year ago, just as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started sending migrants by the busload to Chicago, Naperville — behind the scenes — developed an emergency management plan to act as a framework for response should asylum-seekers arrive in the city with little to no notice, according to records obtained by the Naperville Sun through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Seven pages long, the plan lays out, step by step, how the city would welcome migrants — on an emergency basis only. The framework deals in the short term, defining the municipal agencies, partners and resources Naperville would engage while awaiting further direction from state officials.

Today, as coordination efforts around migrants arriving in Illinois have centralized in Chicago and Cook County, Naperville officials say the likelihood of the city being caught off guard — spurring activation of its Asylum-Seeker Bus Plan — is very slim. But the plan remains valid, officials say, and a valuable asset to have at the city’s disposal.

That’s what Chirico intended when he first broached the idea.

“The fact that we have it is a giant advantage,” Chirico said this week. “It brings peace of mind. … Having that playbook on hand is very important.”

Early strategizing for the framework began in fall 2022, records show.

On Sept. 19, 2022, then-City Clerk Pam Gallahue sent an email to community partners — representatives of school districts, the Naperville Park District and local organizations — with city and county officials copied, regarding “Coordination of Migrant Services and Resources.”

In her message, Gallahue wrote it “is critical that the city, as well as its partners, have a plan to coordinate the arrival and support of these individuals should they come to Naperville.”

She continued, “Mayor Chirico has asked that a group be formed to discuss plans and services.”

For the next three months, the former mayor and city staff met with community partners to talk through and organize the different resources needed to adequately support migrants in Naperville temporarily, records show.

Those engaged in the planning process included Naper Settlement, Naperville District 203, North Central College, nonprofit Loaves & Fishes, Christian humanitarian organization World Relief and the Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project. Meanwhile, city staff also engaged with officials from DuPage and Will counties and the state, according to records and interviews.

In the early stages of devising the plan, Chirico spoke with state officials regarding his intention to prepare the city for an unannounced bus arrival, he said. At that time, state officials asked him whether his planning initiative was “being done in an effort to invite asylum-seekers to the community,” Chirico said. His answer was no.

“That would be something that would require a much larger conversation with the (Naperville City) council and the community,” he said. “On my own, I would never be able to answer that question. Our goal was just to be prepared.”

Asked if he considered raising that larger conversation with the council, and by extension the community, Chirico said he did not.

“From my perspective, no one was really bringing it to my attention to do so,” he said. “I was just trying to be prepared. … No one ever called me and said, ‘Hey, let’s do this,’ or anything like that.

He also said, “I just think it wasn’t something that I was trying to invite.

“This is a social discussion and a social issue. I think our government work is pretty well-defined. We have a fairly narrow path of responsibility. I feel like those types of topics are better directed towards state or federal politics, where social issues are at the core of what they do.”

By December 2022, the city’s plan was in place. Even after it was distributed to stakeholders, Emergency Management Coordinator Dan Nelson noted, “it is very unlikely the attached plan will be implemented,” he wrote in a Dec. 20, 2022, email to Chirico, city staff, county partners, mutual aid support and community partners.

This May, the plan was updated, records show.

In a May 10 email to Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) regional coordinator Jimmy Thompson, Nelson shared the plan and asked for advice on ways to enhance it.

Thompson replied, “Your plan looks good and is addressing what needs are required, if a bus (arrives).”

According to the latest version, the plan says that should a bus carrying migrants arrive in Naperville, the city’s Emergency Management Agency will arrange for transportation and mass care services “from the time of disembarkation in Naperville until transportation services arrive to relocate to Chicago.” IEMA will have the responsibility of relocating migrants in Naperville to Chicago, the plan says.

The plan assures that “assisting, supporting and mutual aid will be available to assist with transportation and bilingual services” and that “multiple, redundant resources will be identified to meet these needs.”

Since the plan’s development, Nelson, speaking in an interview last week, said, “There have been continual meetings around this for the past over a year.” He also said he has briefed the city’s plan out in county partner meetings and that other communities have asked for a copy.

For larger dissemination, however, Nelson said, “Most of our plans are for our purposes only.”

City spokeswoman Linda LaCloche added, “These are all operational.”

“(These plans) don’t go to the council,” she said. “We don’t have community meetings about them.”

She likened the city’s plan to preparing for a flood or a tornado.

“It’s always important to be prepared,” she said. “Being prepared is something that, as a government, is our responsibility. When things happen in a community, that’s why we exist. … There’s different crises and different levels of things. But that’s really what our main role is as a government.”

While almost entirely focused on immediate response, the city’s asylum-seeker plan does address that it would need to develop a separate framework “to welcome asylum-seekers temporarily housed in Chicago/Cook County into Naperville for longer-term residency.” That would “require additional coordination meetings between Naperville planners, governor’s office, IEMA, (Illinois Department of Human Services), and Chicago/Cook County.”

Both Nelson and LaCloche said that to their knowledge, no such conversations have been initiated.

In August, city staff prepared a statement should anyone call inquiring whether Chicago is sending migrants to Naperville, records show. The statement reads, “The city of Naperville has not received migrant transfers in the past and we have not been contacted by any entity regarding any pending transfers. The city’s emergency management coordinator is in regular communication with his counterparts at the state and county levels and is keeping the city manager updated. He too has not been informed of any plan to relocate migrants to Naperville.”

Asked whether the city would be open to conversations over longer-term settlement, both Nelson and LaCloche said that is a question for elected officials.

“We are a big community, so I think it would be something that would be discussed, but I’m not aware of any of those conversations taking place,” LaCloche said.

Current Naperville Mayor Scott Wehrli could not be reached for comment.

However, Chirico said he thinks the eventual resettlement of migrants in Chicago’s suburbs, Naperville included, is inevitable.

“The city of Chicago is having major challenges right now … so I don’t think any suburban municipality is out of the picture at this point,” he said.

More than 20,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since buses first started coming to the city on Aug. 31, 2022. What began as a political stunt by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to draw attention to strained resources in border cities handling surging numbers of migrants has ballooned into a full-blown crisis. Southern border governments and charities are sending migrants on bus and train to Chicago and other immigration-friendly U.S. interior cities that have no clear plan to care for them.

Though Chicago has created more than two dozen temporary shelters across the city to house migrants in abandoned buildings, there are still thousands sleeping on the floors of police stations or outside of them. This past week, thousands of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, experienced freezing cold temperatures for the first time. Meanwhile, faith-based organizations and volunteers scrambled to help them find warm shelter.

Outside of Chicago, suburbs and downstate governments have not faced migration on the same scale, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said migrants won’t be sent anywhere unless local officials agree to have them come. A few have. To those areas — including Lake County, Oak Park and Elgin — state officials recently gave $11 million to help accommodate arriving migrants.

Though Naperville has been removed from having to provide such accommodations so far, Chirico says that doesn’t mean the city will be exempted from eventually feeling the impacts of the migrant crisis down the road.

“I think in the long term it’s inevitable that these asylum-seekers will start to migrate out … into all of the cities throughout the area,” he said. And when they do, he went on, Naperville’s asylum-seeker emergency response plan will be a boon to the city.

“At that point, we’d find ourselves in a very similar situation, where these people are going to need services,” he said. “It’s not going to happen all at once. But the things that we discussed (putting this plan together) will certainly still apply. … There’s all sorts of things that we have thought through in the event that these asylum-seekers show up.

“We have a head start on those sorts of challenges and are ready to provide good quality services.”

Chicago Tribune reporters Laura Rodríguez Presa, Nell Salzman, Robert McCoppin and Zareen Syed contributed.

tkenny@chicagotribune.com