Chicago has been staring down a manufactured migrant crisis for months that has reached a boiling point, leaving vulnerable asylum seekers in despair and struggling to find safe shelter.

It’s an issue city officials are warning could end terribly without federal intervention. It comes as a federal policy that limits the number of asylum seekers expires, and the city could see even more asylum seekers being sent here from southern border states.

Chicago has prided itself as a welcoming city for migrants and has pulled out all the stops to give aid to these new arrivals, many of whom had faced persecution in their home country.

But how did the city get to this point where families are sleeping on the floors of police stations and being served expired food?

Who’s behind the problem?

The mastermind behind the mass shipping of migrants from the southern border to Democrat-led cities is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking reelction to a third term. The Republican governor originally said the action was in response to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies that were “overwhelming border communities in Texas.”

Sanctuary cities such as Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C., were the prime destination of Abbott’s initiative. City officials had said they were given little notice and left scrambling to provide essential care to these migrants.

Chicago received its first busload of migrants Aug. 31, about two months before voters hit the booths to choose the governor of Texas. Abbott easily won reelection against his Democrat challenger, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke.

“They are treating people like inanimate objects,” the Rev. Sandra Castillo said of Abbott’s policy. “They are taking human beings who have suffered persecution in their home countries, who have traveled a dangerous journey and showing zero empathy.”

Castillo, chair of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago Sanctuary Task Force, was on the ground in those first few weeks and has been helping asylum seekers as they continue to arrive nearly a year later.

Castillo said the city jumped into action quickly by setting up temporary housing in hotels and establishing welcoming centers that not only helped get folks settled but also addressed their dire medical needs.

What was especially concerning, Castillo said, was someone in Texas was giving these asylum seekers false information before their arrival in Chicago. That provided additional hurdles with people going to the wrong location.

The city was able to sift through that confusion to find asylum seekers temporary housing. But resources are finite, and the crisis has reached a magnitude that is leaving already vulnerable families in trouble.

A brewing crisis

Chicago is a “Welcoming City” that provides a level of protection to undocumented residents who can’t be “prosecuted solely due to their immigration status.” There are certain measures in place that prevent Chicago police from cooperating with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

All city services and benefits are available to all Chicagoans regardless of immigration status.

So far, the city has welcomed more than 8,000 migrants since the first bus arrived in August. It hasn’t always been easy, as the mayor’s office has found itself in heated discussions over its policies with some longtime residents feeling left out of the conversation.

Late last year, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed through a measure to turn a shuttered school in Woodlawn into a shelter for migrants, but that decision faced pushback with Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who said she was blindsided by the move and vowed to fight it.

Taylor argued there was zero input from her or the community and the move was putting these migrants at a disadvantage because the cultural infrastructure wasn’t in place. The closed school at 6420 S. University Ave. is in a majority Black neighborhood.

The city would go on to open the shelter in February and met a small amount of resistance from residents. A month later, the City Council voted to accept $20 million from the state to support incoming migrants.

Last week, the city was caught flat-footed when migrants began arriving at O’Hare International Airport. Those arriving were Venezuelan migrants given a one-way ticket from Texas. About 40 people, mostly young women and children, slept outside a homelessness center inside the airport, Block Club Chicago reported.

When we were dealing with the first wave it would generally take us about two hours to find new arrivals a shelter to stay in. Now, families are waiting a few weeks so they’re left stranded anywhere they can sleep, which is often at a church or a police station.”

—  Yuritza Arroyo, welcoming center manager at the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council

City officials have shared interests in sheltering new migrants at the old South Shore High School building and hosted a contentious meeting. The meeting delved into a shouting match, with some residents demanding the temporary shelter be opened in a more affluent area of the city where an abundance of resources already exists.

Two days after the new arrivals, city Budget Director Susie Park warned the City Council there is a $53 million shortfall to meet the surging crisis. The Chicago Sun-Times later reported asylum seekers were sleeping on the floors of police stations and eating expired meal rations.

“The city of Chicago is aware that the state of Texas is planning to resume busing individuals and families to cities throughout the United States, including Chicago,” Lightfoot said in an open letter to Abbott. “I am, yet again, appealing to your better nature and asking that you stop this inhumane and dangerous action.”

Lightfoot said the arriving migrants needed extensive care and some of the women were in labor. None of these concerns was addressed before sending them to Chicago.

“Instead, these individuals and families were packed onto buses and shipped across the country like freight without regard to their personal circumstances.”

Abbott responded to Lightfoot with his own letter.

“If you truly want to ‘work together’ to find a real solution to this border crisis gripping our nation, you must call on the Biden administration to do its job by securing our border, repelling the illegal immigrants flooding into our communities,” Abbott wrote. “Until President Biden secures the border to stop the inflow of mass migration, Texas will continue this necessary program.”

Title 42 was implemented in 2020 by former President Donald Trump and allowed the United States to quickly expel asylum seekers from the southern border before they could ask for asylum.

“If Chicago can’t deal with 8,000 in less than a year, how are small Texas border communities supposed to manage 13,000 in just one day?” Abbott wrote.

Texas has used about $1 billion in federal COVID-19 dollars to pay for its crackdown at the border.

Castillo rejects the idea that there isn’t enough money to help these families and that responsibility should be with the federal government and not cities like Chicago that can only do so much.

The federal government should be using the money for supportive services rather than enforcement policies, Castillo said. Her organization helps on a humanitarian level, but it is ultimately the federal government to step in.

Pressing needs

Castillo said migrants have several pressing needs, but none greater than housing. Shelters are overwhelmed, leaving people homeless in a city they aren’t familiar with.

Housing also is critical for finding aid for asylum seekers.

“Because we have to have at least short-term housing for them before we are able to reach out to a nonprofit that can provide case-management services,” Castillo said. “Then the nonprofit can provide them with support in applying for the medical card or they can apply for SNAP benefits.”

Yuritza Arroyo, welcoming center manager at the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said even finding people a shelter has proved difficult.

“When we were dealing with the first wave it would generally take us about two hours to find new arrivals a shelter to stay in. Now, families are waiting a few weeks so they’re left stranded anywhere they can sleep, which is often at a church or a police station.”

What is different now is that hotels aren’t helping anymore. Hotels were seen as a lifeline, but those hotels relied on city dollars to host them, Arroyo said. Without the city paying the hotels, they are sitting it out as the crisis grows.

The state also helped with putting migrants in hotels and providing essential services in the early months.

“It’s not just asylum seekers coming from Texas,” Arroyo said. “People saw how well we were helping migrants last summer and are coming here from other states looking for the same help, but it’s different now.”

The city is at a breaking point and it is time for much-needed intervention, activists have said.

“We are at the point where the federal government needs to step in and provide the states experiencing the influx of new-arrival families with more resources,” Arroyo said. “It is up to the federal government to declare this a humanitarian crisis.”

• Produced by the Illinois Answers Project.