By Alice Yin
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson toured a new welcoming center for migrants at a Chicago Public Schools campus on Monday, as hundreds of asylum-seekers continue to wait for shelter inside police stations with no immediate end in sight.
Johnson was joined by CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and other city officials inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy, where a new center dedicated to assisting young migrants in the West Town community area will debut this week, funded through CPS’ regular operating budget. The new resource hub — designed to help youth enroll in school, as well as connect with medical care, temporary housing and other social services — was pitched as a pilot program that the mayor’s administration hopes to replicate citywide.
“Let me be very clear: Regardless of the language that a family speaks, their country of origin or the circumstances that have brought them to our city, this local center is equipped to serve them,” Johnson said at a news conference following his tour. “This welcome center reflects what we believe is the core of our city — that every person who steps foot in Chicago deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and it’s the diversity of our city that makes us the unique city that we are.”
The city’s celebratory rollout comes as nearly 900 asylum-seekers continue to huddle inside Chicago police station lobbies, despite concerns surrounding their living conditions, as well as an ongoing investigation into whether officers engaged in sexual misconduct involving migrants in the department’s 10th District in Little Village.
At the Monday news conference, Johnson said the probe remains “ongoing” and that the police watchdog agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, will have an update on Tuesday.
“I understand that there will be new information. It is still being investigated,” Johnson said. When asked if the officers allegedly involved in sexual misconduct should still be on the job, he replied, “I believe that under the policies that we have now, that as an investigation is underway, that these accusations are just that.”
More than 11,000 migrants have come to Chicago since last August, when Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent the first busload of asylum-seekers to northern “sanctuary cities,” arguing they should happily fulfill their promise to welcome migrants instead of placing the obligation on southern border states. Since then, officials including Johnson, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot have described Abbott’s actions as a cruel political stunt, but the waves of new arrivals have not stopped.
Chicago leaders have maintained they will not turn their backs on these migrants, who largely hail from Venezuela and other countries in Central and South America, as they wait for their asylum status applications in the U.S. to be processed. But the federal government has lagged with issuing permits needed for them to start work while also offering less-than-desired emergency funding for local governments.
In the nation’s third-largest city, the challenges have ballooned in recent months, with reports of migrant families eating cold or moldy food inside makeshift shelters, sleeping inside bus stations or tents on the street and crowding inside Chicago police stations.
As of Monday, 878 newly arrived migrants were staying inside police stations and 69 at O’Hare International Airport, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication. According to a Friday briefing to aldermen, more than 100 migrants in those settings were children.
The 10th District police station in Little Village and Lawndale has been cleared of all migrant families waiting inside for placement following the city’s acknowledgment this month that officers were being investigated over whether they engaged in sexual acts with migrants housed there, possibly including a minor.
Pressed Monday to name a timeline for moving the remaining hundreds of migrants out of Chicago Police Department stations, Johnson merely said it would happen “as soon as possible. That is our top priority.”
“Yes, there is urgency,” he said. “We have a number of facilities that we are in the process of standing up. … But as has been articulated, as we decompress, more arrive.”
Monday’s tour included four classrooms set up with free school supplies, tablets displaying the CPS website and flashy backdrops with “Welcome” printed in various languages.
Federal and local policies allow children to enroll in public school regardless of immigration status, and 20% of CPS students are English learners, officials said. The district added $15 million for English language learning services to this school year’s budget, $8 million of which goes toward “enrollment adjustments” for the schools that will receive most of the new arrivals.
The Clemente pilot will be appointment-only and is geared toward prospective students in the West Town neighborhood. Young migrants outside that area will be referred back to CPS, officials said. Teens will be enrolled at the high school, which is known for its large Latino population and location next to the heart of the city’s Puerto Rican population in Humboldt Park, while younger children will be enrolled at the local elementary schools that also have dual language programs.
“I will tell you, for me, this is a very small investment,” Martinez said. “I think each center, we estimate that it might cost us somewhere around maybe three-quarters of a million dollars. I see it as a great pilot.”
Besides the welcoming center, the city has stood up about a dozen shelters for migrants in wards spanning from Rogers Park to downtown to Ford City. About 3,200 new arrivals have exited the city’s shelter system so far, aldermen were told Friday, while about 5,300 remain at one of those centers, which have proved divisive among some neighbors upset with their presence.
Johnson defended his administration’s mobilization on the issue thus far, noting that his deputy chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas and others have done “outstanding” in “building an entire operation that did not exist.” But the new mayor, who has been in office for two months, also hinted Monday at the challenges at hand, joking about the often-futile preparation educators make to ensure the school year starts off “smoothly.”
“I know this is going to be just like that,” Johnson, a former teacher, teased, to which Clemente Principal Devon Morales responded: “There are no lesson plans involved.”
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