A not-so-warm welcome for thousands of migrants now sleeping outside in Chicago
Chicago Tribune (
archive.ph)
By Nell Salzman and Laura Rodriguez Presa
2023-10-14 10:00:00GMT
Pedro Matos, 30, wife Frangeny Mendoza, 27, and their son Ediomar Mendoza, 8, all from Venezuela, prepare to sleep in a park across the street from 22nd District Chicago police station Oct. 10, 2023. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Frangeny Mendoza, 27, huddled on a thin fleece Salvation Army blanket next to her husband, Pedro Matos, 30, and 8-year-old son, Ediomar, Tuesday night in Edna White Century Garden, which over the past month has become a tent encampment for hundreds of migrants waiting for shelter placement at the nearby Morgan Park police station.
The family from Venezuela, who were put on a bus by city officials in El Paso, Texas, and sent to Chicago without knowing where they were going, spent their first three nights in the sanctuary city sleeping outside on the ground.
“It’s so cold here, but we have nowhere to go. We don’t have anyone here,” she said in Spanish.
Wind and rain have descended on Chicago at the same time
as unprecedented numbers of migrants from the southern border. For months,
the city has been scrambling to house thousands of migrants who have been sent on buses by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott since August 2022, placing them in the lobbies of police stations.
But now there is less space than ever and city officials have no concrete plan moving forward on
the prospect of winterized base camps, raising alarm from experts about a looming humanitarian disaster.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, said Thursday that the city has received 63 buses from the southern border over the past week alone, some with no warning.
There are over 11,000 migrants in city-run shelters and over 3,000 waiting for placement.
With Abbott threatening to send more than 1,000 migrants every day, the city is averaging a new shelter every six days, said the deputy chief of staff. And the city receives even more on planes from Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas.
Pacione-Zayas said Thursday that Chicago is a sanctuary city with welcoming values, but she said there is only so much the city can do. The mayor’s
2024 budget unveiled Wednesday included only $150 million in migrant funding — less than half the projected costs this year.
“It wouldn’t be right if we did not let folks know the limitations that we have,” she said. “We’ve inherited no infrastructure for this.”
Mendoza is a hairdresser and beauty technician. She came to the United States with her husband and two sons, Ediomar and 11-year-old Maykel, because she was having trouble making enough money to survive, she said.
The majority of migrants who have arrived over the past year come from Venezuela and are fleeing a collapsed economy, where they say they struggle to make more than $25 a week.
On her way to the United States, she said she fell down the stairs of a two-story building in Guatemala and broke her collarbone, extending a journey that would have already taken months. She and her family waited days to save more than $1,000 for the platinum she needed to stabilize her neck. The operation was free, Mendoza said, but the metal bar cost them their family’s savings.
After her surgery, things didn’t get easier.
She and her family rode on a freight train through Mexico, watching a man try to jump on it, miss and die. They entered the United States as parolees but were immediately put in a detention center in El Paso, where they were given frozen burritos to eat and not much more. They said all of their belongings except their cellphones were taken from them and thrown away.
After a week in detention — seven days without bathing, and barely resting — they were released in El Paso, where they slept in the street because there was no room for them in city shelters.
Jesús de la Torre, a research fellow at Hope Border Institute, which works with migrants in El Paso as well as Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and Las Cruces, New Mexico, said numbers at the border are soaring due to a combination of violence, economic instability and a change of immigration policy following the pandemic.
“There are spikes in releases (from detention centers), with 1,600 in just one day,” he said about the situation in El Paso. “Shelters are at capacity. … The community is stressed. The city is doing a lot. The county is responding.”
The family entered a city strained for resources and were put on a bus to a different, equally strained city. Upon arrival, they were dropped off by the Chicago Office of Emergency Management at the police station in Morgan Park.
“They don’t even know they’re coming to Chicago. That has some concerns for us around trafficking. Human trafficking, that is,” said Pacione-Zayas.
Peter Andreas, a professor of international studies and political science at Brown University, called the busing by Abbott an “interesting extension of the idea of trafficking.” The federal government can legally put migrants on buses and move them around the border, he said, but southern governors likely don’t have the legal authority to act in the same way — especially to send migrants across state lines.
Amid political warfare where people are shipped around the United States like pawns, volunteers helping provide services to migrants at police stations are struggling to keep up.
Venezuelan migrants sheltering outside the 11th District Chicago police station set up donated tents on Oct. 11, 2023. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Venezuelan migrants play outside their tents as they join dozens of migrants trying to keep warm with donated jackets, blankets and tents on Leland Avenue outside the 17th District Chicago police station, Oct. 10, 2023. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Volunteers drop off tents at the Morgan Park police station, but Mendoza said people who have been staying at the station for days get tent priority. She and her family just got to the station, so they’ll have to wait.
On Monday evening, Jennifer Meade,
who volunteers at the Morgan Park police station, delivered a $90 tent, which she said she mostly paid for with her own money.
Meade said as temperatures drop, volunteers helping migrants at the station are doing what they can to scrounge up blankets and sleeping bags. Many Venezuelans have never experienced cold like this.
“The crisis is just overwhelming. Every night,” she said.
Around the city, volunteers have voiced similar concerns.
On the first night that temperatures dropped below 50 degrees last week, Erika Villegas, the lead volunteer at the police station in Chicago Lawn, called on her network of volunteers to bring in more help. There are nearly 200 migrants there, including at least 20 children, she said, and there is no longer enough space for all of them to spend the night inside the station.
Children shivered as their parents tried to wrap them around their arms while laying on the grass and sidewalks.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Villegas said. “But we’re running out of funds, out of energy. Now we can only provide them with words of encouragement, but frankly, I’m losing hope myself.”
Heather Nichols, one of the volunteers leading efforts at the police station in Garfield Park, said the situation looked different in the summer. Conversations among mutual aid networks then centered around hygiene, human contact and care.
Now, she said, everything is more desperate. People are getting sick from the cold.
“When people are being treated inhumanely for large stretches of time with no respite, it’s hard to imagine that this is any sort of way to set people up for success in assimilating and becoming productive members of this country,” she said.
Migrants at a station on the Near South Side have moved into the cement area that separates the incoming and outgoing traffic at State and 18th streets. Some police stations around the city close their indoor bathrooms to migrants, so people are washing themselves in port-a-potties. The stations are beginning to smell, and many migrants are growing anxious.
Some have expressed the possibility of returning to Venezuela or a different country where they can endure the winter. But most are hopeful that, sooner than later, they’ll have a warm place to sleep.
Karina Ayala-Bermejo, the president and CEO of Instituto del Progreso Latino, said the nonprofit is asking Chicagoans for drop-off donations in front of their building, 2555 S. Blue Island Ave., on the Lower West Side.
“We are really hoping for new or very gently used,” she said. “We want to give our families clothes that are clean. Something they can be proud to wear. Outer gear. Gloves. Socks. Shoes. Winter shoes.”
Those interested can also purchase items
through their Amazon gift registry, she said.
On the Tuesday cold night in Morgan Park, Mendoza said the metal bar replacing her shattered collarbone stings when it’s cold. She said she’s still in a lot of pain, and hoped a volunteer would bring her Tylenol.
Frangeny Mendoza, 27, and her son Ediomar Mendoza, 8, both from Venezuela, eat chips before sleeping in a park across the street from the 22nd District Chicago police station, Oct. 10, 2023. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
“Maybe right now we are going through a hard time, but I have hope that we will come out stronger,” she said. “Maybe not tomorrow, but we will have a bed. A house.”
At around 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Mendoza’s son Ediomar buried himself under a thin blanket. He had traversed a jungle, watched his mother wait days in excruciating pain for medical treatment and boarded a charter bus to a place he had never heard of before.
Mendoza looked over at the group of migrants sitting in folding chairs, the streetlight illuminating their circle of tents. Laughter cut through the chilling air. Someone had hung a hammock between two trees.
“They say it takes two or three weeks to get into a shelter,” she said. “And they also say it will snow. I don’t know, but that’s what they say.”
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Democrats welcome mat for migrants is also fraying party’s base
Chicago Tribune (
archive.ph)
By Rick Pearson and Jeremy Gorner
2023-10-14 10:00:00
From almost the moment he took office, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has championed the state as a sanctuary for immigrants. But in his quest to keep Illinois a “welcoming state,” the welcome mat is becoming politically frayed as Chicago tries to cope with an influx of more than 18,000 asylum-seekers.
What was once altruistic idealism delivered 1,200 miles away from the nation’s southern border is now colliding with realism in how to temporarily house, provide for and resettle thousands of asylum-seekers in a crisis largely orchestrated by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to use his state’s long-standing border issues to paint leaders in Democratic cities and states as hypocrites.
As each new bus arrives here from Texas and other locales, more political pressure mounts on Pritzker and on Chicago’s new progressive Democratic leadership under Mayor Brandon Johnson.
With no firm plans in place and the only concrete advice to incoming migrants being Pritzker’s warning that “it’s gonna get cold in Chicago and New York very soon,” cracks among the Democratic base, particularly among key ethnic and racial blocs, have emerged over spending taxpayer dollars and housing for migrants.
Despite the cold political calculation of using human beings as political pawns in a larger federal game aimed at securing the nation’s southern border, Abbott’s strategy of spreading the pressure on the federal government may be working.
“We of course are a welcoming state and have been caring for the people who’ve arrived. But we can’t bear the burden only ourselves,” Pritzker said on CBS’ “
Face the Nation” on his calls for assistance from Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
“It seems like now is the moment to talk about border security and immigration reform. We want immigrants in the United States, we also want border security. It seems like there’s a compromise there,” the Democratic governor said.
But there has been no serious effort at the federal level to deal with comprehensive immigration reform since 20 years ago, when George W. Bush, a former Texas governor, was president. That effort fell by the wayside as the GOP saw the issue of illegal immigration as a potent one for building the party’s political base.
Now, with the leadership of the Republican-led U.S. House unsettled, prospects for a comprehensive immigration plan and significant federal aid to Chicago appear unlikely anytime soon.
Pritzker’s latest comments are in contrast to the boldness he exhibited only 10 days after he was sworn in as governor in January 2019. Then, he issued
an executive order declaring immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers as “critical to the fabric of our State, contributing the culture and economy that make Illinois a great place to live” and requiring the state to expand welcoming centers.
In December of that year, in response to then-President Donald Trump vastly curbing legal immigration and issuing an executive order allowing states and cities to opt out of refugee resettlement programs, Pritzker
wrote a defiant letter to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declaring that Illinois would “proudly consent” to extending help to refugees.
“As the governor of Illinois and the great-grandson of refugees, I am committed to ensuring that Illinois is a welcoming state, especially for refugees and those seeking asylum,” he wrote. “As survivors of persecution, refugees embody the importance of human rights, democracy, and freedom. Refugees’ resilience in the face of hardship inspires courage, hope, and perseverance. And refugees’ countless contributions undoubtedly make our states and nation stronger.”
Fast-forward to earlier this month and a letter to a different administration.
Pritzker, a member of Biden’s reelection advisory board and the host governor for the Democratic National Convention that will renominate the president in August, wrote to Biden that after 13 months of migrant deliveries by bus, Illinois is overwhelmed and “mostly unsupported.”
“Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum-seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government,”
Pritzker wrote. “Most critically, the federal government’s lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois.”
Pritzker’s letter did get attention in the White House with Biden taking recent actions on immigration, including speeding up work permits for Venezuelan migrants, resuming deportations of border crossers from Venezuela who do not gain refugee status, resuming the building of a border wall in Texas and sending a team from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Chicago to assess the migrant situation.
Reflecting the problems Democrats face over the issue, Democratic U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez who represents a Latino influence district that stretches from several city neighborhoods to the western suburbs, sent out two news releases on Oct. 5 — one slamming the Biden administration for resuming the border wall and a second praising the administration for sending the Homeland Security team to Chicago.
The White House followed up with an email to reporters that pointed out the Ramirez news release showing appreciation to Biden for sending the Homeland Security team. It made no mention of her other statement that criticized Biden’s border wall decision.
On Thursday, Democratic U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth joined with 13 of the state’s 14 Democratic House members in writing a letter to Biden urging the administration to devote more resources to Chicago for the migrant crisis. Central and southwestern Illinois Democratic U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, a first-term legislator from Springfield, did not sign the letter.
“State and local officials have worked tirelessly to serve these new arrivals, and the federal government must swiftly provide assistance and resources that reflect this administration’s commitment to safe, orderly, and humane immigration processes,”
the letter said, in seeking flexibility in grant funding, waiving fees for temporary work permits for migrants and appointing a federal point person on the migrant issue for Illinois.
With Democrats in Illinois acknowledging a lack of early 2024 enthusiasm for Biden among those in the long-underserved Black and Latino communities, the issue of dollars being spent and the search for places to house the asylum-seekers has become an added political problem.
On the West Side, Johnson has put on hold plans to use the
Amundsen Park field house as a migrant shelter amid residents’ protests that it would curtail programs and services.
On the South Side, Democratic state Sen. Willie Preston hosted a community meeting in the predominantly Black Auburn Gresham neighborhood where he asked residents if they supported Chicago revoking its sanctuary city status.
“I’m telling you all that this is a very serious situation,” he said. “It is a very controversial situation, and that is why I’m one of the first state elected officials to my knowledge to step out (in) front of this issue and say enough is enough, hold the line. We need a cap on migrants because the people don’t want it. We cannot afford it, and I’m willing to fight.”
As for using local and state tax dollars to help the migrants, Preston said, “I believe our community has sovereignty. I believe our community has paid taxes.” Noting that a high percentage of people in Illinois experiencing homelessness are Black, he said he thinks “charity starts at home.”
Andrew Chavez, 32, a downtown office worker who was born in Chicago and raised on the Southwest Side, said he is generally supportive of Democratic causes. But he said he has drawn a line on the migrant issue, believing the money being devoted to serving asylum-seekers should go instead to help the existing homeless population and to restore neighborhoods.
“This tarnishes the hard work my parents went through when they legally migrated here from Mexico. They didn’t get any help. The migrants now coming over here have contributed to the negative stereotypes that people have about people like my family,” said Chavez, a first-generation Mexican American.
“The fact that we’re spending millions of dollars at this point, money suddenly being found to renovate abandoned buildings and find places for these people, is ridiculous,” he said.
Democrats privately concede Chavez isn’t alone in his feelings — another example of Abbott’s politically debilitating aim for Democrats in sending migrants to blue cities and states.
Charles Wheeler, a retired professor of public affairs reporting at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said sending migrants to Chicago was a strategy aimed at allowing Republicans to portray Democrats as politicians who don’t put their money where their mouth is.
Wheeler said Republicans are saying, “Oh yeah, you’re fine with it when you don’t have to deal with — quote — these people — unquote. But when they actually arrive, in your communities, you are in an uproar.”
Wheeler continued: “And it gets fed by folks to whose advantage it is to pit one group of marginalized folks against another group of marginalized folks.”
This past Tuesday, Pritzker acknowledged it was easy to see why Republicans “think that this is such a great idea” to send thousands of migrants to Chicago and other Democratic cities — “because they want to cause rifts.”
“We’re all doing our best to try to work with the communities where they are challenged to welcome those folks into their communities,” he said.
“I know there are people who are concerned about the continued migration to Chicago and that’s one of the reasons why for the last 13 months, I’ve been saying to the federal government and to our congresspeople that we need not only dollars to help take care of the people who come here, but also have a better system for (a) distribution of folks around the country if they so choose,” he said.
Pritzker also repeated a realism that he also views as a deterrent — the upcoming winter weather.
“I can guarantee you that if people at the border understood how cold it will be and that we are having trouble housing the people that are already here, they will not choose to come to Chicago — assuming that they’re the ones choosing,” he said.
