Strain of handling migrant crisis in city persists, this time as tempers flare at community meeting on migrant shelter opening in East Hyde Park hotel
Chicago’s ongoing struggle to house and care for an influx of migrants sent north from the southern border remained in the spotlight this week, as residents of three South Side lakefront communities demanded information from the city staff and elected officials Wednesday night about a soon-to-be-reestablished migrant shelter off DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
The meeting at the Promontory music venue days ahead of the shelter’s planned opening, was the latest in a string of tense neighborhood forums in which residents have pushed back on hosting migrants in shuttered high schools and other city buildings.
Hours earlier, state and city officials had formally requested more assistance from the federal government in order to keep welcoming migrants.
“Since the first bus arrived (in Chicago) a year ago, it’s become increasingly clear that welcoming new arrivals is not a short-term crisis, but it’s a long-term dynamic,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday. Without more resources, he said, “the city of Chicago cannot go on welcoming new arrivals safely and capably.”
The Lake Shore Hotel, in the 4900 block of South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, hosted migrants between January and April, according to the city staff. This week its reopening became the latest flashpoint in the migrant crisis, as one of many emergency facilities set up to relieve pressure on police stations and other ad hoc solutions to the mushrooming number of asylum-seekers from Venezuela and other parts of Central and South America.
About 200 people were on hand as residents questioned city officials about everything from whether new arrivals would be vaccinated and fingerprinted to how their children would be educated to the food they would eat to whether migrants were being housed in other parts of Chicago.
Many wondered whether the city could use federal disaster funding or expansive federal buildings, such as the downtown post office. City staff members responded that because the U.S. government hasn’t designated the influx of migrants as a federal emergency, those resources are currently off-limits.
Johnson, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic members of the Illinois congressional delegation held an event Wednesday to ask the Biden administration for “significant support and immigration policy changes.”
Among other things, Johnson and Pritzker called on the Department of Homeland Security to speed up its processing for asylum-seekers’ work permits. That application process can take several months or more than a year, experts told the Tribune in July.
At the meeting about the Lake Shore Hotel, city staff members and elected officials explained how Chicago was using the resources at its disposal to aid and supervise newcomers, from medical assistance to curfew rules.
The explanations received mixed reception from residents, who accused city representatives of being insensitive to the concerns about migrants who will be staying in the area. They said they were fearful that they would see an uptick in criminal activity, traffic and parking issues, and problems with the upkeep of the areas where migrants stay.
Adrienna Edwards, 48, said she and her neighbors had witnessed recent arrivals involved in illegal activity and she asked whom they should hold accountable for what they were seeing.
“There’s been a lot of experience with disturbances in our communities,” she said. “(Our) current experience is totally different from the bullet points you’ve given us.”
Deputy police Chief Stephen Chung and newly seated Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, responded with a discussion of preceding incidents with migrants at the Lake Shore Hotel and what residents should do when they witness criminal activity, but Edwards was not satisfied with their answers.
“You all are just tragically tone-deaf to everything you’re saying,” she said.
Much of the dissatisfaction hinged on the level of services the city was providing to current residents, particularly in predominantly Black areas of the city.
Dee Walker, of East Hyde Park, asked about the predominantly white, wealthy neighborhood of Lincoln Park and whether that area was hosting migrants. “Are they being asked to give in the same way the South Side of Chicago is being asked to give?” she asked.
Others asked about how the city was assisting residents who already live in the city, particularly those who are homeless or have mental health difficulties.
Owen Lawson, 54, said he’d passed homeless people sleeping under the Metra tracks on his way to the meeting. “Will they have access to these facilities?” he asked.
Throughout the meeting, attendees applauded — or shouted back at questions and comments they disagreed with. Yancy pleaded with the crowd for order several times.
“We cannot have a conversation if people are not respectful,” he said.
Gerry Bouey, 70, said he’d come to the meeting in hopes of having a conversation and had been dismayed at the level of tension in the room. “They’re just screaming at each other,” he said.
Lucy Ascoli, 81, asked about who would be running the shelter so she could contact them and help aid migrant families.
“We believe every community should support the asylum-seekers,” she said.
Ald. Andre Vazquez, 40th, who attended the meeting as a representative of the mayor’s migrant task force, told the crowd that any neighborhood was entitled to more of an advance warning than what south lakefront residents had received about the coming migrant shelter.
He also promised the crowd that the city was working toward reopening mental health clinics, increasing job opportunities for Black youths and a unified shelter system for any Chicagoan without a place to live.
Shortly before the end of the meeting, Yancy invited residents to participate in the upcoming city budget process and express their opinions about other elements of Chicago government.
Where to house the waves of migrants that have been arriving in Chicago since last year has been a contentious question at times.
In the adjacent neighborhoods of South Shore and Woodlawn, residents have pushed back against the city’s plans to house new arrivals in shuttered high schools.
Many migrants have spent their first days and weeks in Chicago sleeping on the floors of police stations, where they’ve been transferred between stations to accommodate events like the Lollapalooza music festival.
In other cases, the city has relocated migrants out of police stations after complaints alleged that a CPD officer had sexual contact with at least one migrant at a West Side police station.
In the Pilsen neighborhood, a newly formed aid group running a shelter at 21st Street and Racine Avenue said it would shut down the shelter Sept. 3 due to staffing issues and difficulties getting the Illinois Department of Human Services to recognize the operation as a shelter.
The people who were staying at the shelter will have to go back to sleeping on police station floors, volunteers told the Tribune.
An earlier version incorrectly stated Adrienna Edwards’ name.
