Chicago’s troubled response to the migrant crisis will get help from the state with $160 million for an intake center, a winterized tent shelter and other assistance aimed at helping resettle thousands of people stranded at police stations and other temporary locations, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday.
Pritzker’s announcement comes a day after the City Council passed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first budget, which includes $150 million for migrant arrivals, less than half of an estimated cost needed to address the massive influx of asylum seekers since August of last year.
Almost 25,000 migrants have been bused or flown to the city, mostly from Texas where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said his state cannot handle an increase in border crossings from Mexico.
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Sheltering, feeding and resettling them has been a major strain on the city’s resources. Abbott’s move to send people to Democratic-led “sanctuary” cities for migrants has been called a political stunt.
The new money, which comes from an Illinois Department of Human Services surplus, will be broken down into programs aimed at fixing a process that left thousands of migrants sleeping at police stations, O’Hare Airport and city shelters.
The state will provide $65 million for a winterized tent shelter site where up to 2,000 migrants can stay for as long as six months. Another $30 million will help set up a migrant intake center.
The remaining $65 million will pay for legal and other support services for the newly arrived asylum seekers, including a new workforce development program.
“The state that took my ancestors in when they were fleeing pogroms in Ukraine will not allow asylum seekers to freeze on our door steps,” Pritzker said at a news conference in Chicago.
One of the intake center’s primary goals is to identify migrants who are only passing through Chicago to travel to other cities. At that early juncture, transportation can be arranged so those individuals are only housed in the city for a short time.
By helping those people more quickly reach their final destinations, state officials expect demand for city shelters to fall by 10%.
City officials are still looking for a location for the intake center, but said they want it to be near downtown Chicago where buses have been arriving from Texas.
Despite previous concerns over Johnson’s tent shelter plan, Pritzker said that with “winter on its way,” they are necessary.
“Hopefully,” Pritzker said, “it’s in addition” to the two sites the city has already identified at 38th and California and 115th and Halsted.
Pritzker administration officials also announced that the state rental assistance program for asylum seekers is ending.
The program, which provides migrants with up to six months of rental assistance, will now only be offered for three months and will not be offered to anyone just arriving in Chicago.
“There is no more emergency rental assistance,” said Kirstin Chernawsky, associate secretary of early childhood, family and community for the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The state-funded plan envisioned for Chicago is similar to one that’s being implemented in New York. Chicago officials got a firsthand look at New York’s response during a visit there last month.
On Wednesday, Johnson announced a planned 60-day shelter limit, mirroring another policy in New York.
Cristina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s first deputy chief of staff, said the first step is finding a spot for the intake center where migrants can get connected to resources to help them, including legal assistance.
“Anyone seeking asylum there, coming in on the buses has to go through that door,” Pacione-Zayas said.
Asylum-seekers wave as a bus leaves to take them from Union Station to a refugee center in Chicago in August 2022.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file photo
On Thursday, the Cook County Board also approved up to $100 million in funding for the migrant crisis. This includes $70 million for Cook County Health, which has served 16,000 migrant patients; $20 million to municipalities supporting migrants; and an additional $10 million that can be used for emergencies, including the migrant issue.
Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
