Chicago’s first government-run tent encampment for migrants is slated to begin construction at a controversial Southwest Side site this week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Monday in his most hands-on involvement yet in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s effort to shelter asylum-seekers.
Pritzker revealed his more prominent role in running the lot on 38th Street and California Avenue in Brighton Park as well as plans for a new temporary housing facility in Little Village that will serve as the state’s first migrant shelter. The two sites will hold up to 2,200 asylum-seekers combined and be funded by the state as part of its $160 million infusion toward migrant services.
The governor’s new tack in dealing with Chicago’s migrant crisis comes after he faced criticism from officials at City Hall who said the state wasn’t doing enough to help. He’ll now have an opportunity to say he’s leading in addressing the unprecedented influx of asylum-seekers, but will also bear more of the responsibility if things go badly.
And he’s likely to anger neighbors around the Brighton Park site who have opposed its conversion into the migrant encampment.
Pritzker is prepared to shoulder any political blowback that may come from taking a leading role in standing up the tent encampment in the lot near 38th and California, a location chosen by the city that appears to be the most expedient option, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said.
“The governor has led the state through many crises at this point, and political considerations have never been the reason to do something or not do something,” Abudayyeh said. “We are at an inflection point where it is quickly getting colder and colder each day. People are sleeping outdoors, and we don’t have any other options.”
In a statement, Pritzker’s administration noted the camp will not officially open its doors until assessments on environmental concerns — part of the local alderman and community advocates’ frustrations — conclude.
The state hopes to have results from the environmental study by the end of the week and has reached an agreement with GardaWorld Federal Services — a private security firm the state is contracting to build and run the camps — under which the company won’t bill for work performed there if the site proves not to be inhabitable, Abudayyeh said.
Both that base camp and the brick-and-mortar shelter could open as early as mid-December and will have indoor heating, meals and social services such as assistance with applying for work permits, all to be funded by the state.
Priority for those beds will be given to families and disabled individuals sleeping outdoors at Chicago police stations or at O’Hare International Airport.
“Asylum-seekers have traveled thousands of miles and entered this country legally in search of a better life, and we cannot allow them to be met with subfreezing temperatures and inadequate shelter,” Pritzker said in a statement. “These two new shelter sites will provide transitionary housing for more than 2,000 new arrivals as they apply for work permits and strive for independence.”
The latest update came on the heels of more objections to the Brighton Park encampment from Ald. Julia Ramirez, 12th, who said Saturday that GardaWorld would begin erecting tents Monday on the lot at 38th and California.
Mayoral spokesman Ronnie Reese at first did not address questions about her announcement on that timeline but later said that was not the case and only “delivery and staging of equipment has been scheduled for today so construction can begin at a later date.”
Reached by phone Monday, Ramirez said “regardless of construction being done today, I think it’s important that the administration be very clear about whether or not they’ve made that decision.”
Reese said the weekslong endeavor to assess the site’s viability should conclude this week.
“The city conducted site visits and investigated preexisting conditions to determine any potential environmental impacts at the site,” he said Sunday. “These common mitigation strategies are ongoing and anticipated for completion by the end of this week, weather permitting.”
The Johnson administration has grappled with community pushback amid mixed messaging on the 38th and California site, most notably this weekend when Ramirez released her public letter on construction that the city then refuted ahead of Pritzker’s own announcement Monday.
A handful of Brighton Park residents, waving American flags, gathered Monday afternoon in subfreezing temperatures outside the parking lot, saying they were glad construction hadn’t begun yet but they were confused about the upcoming timeline.
Some of them have been coming to protest on the street corner since they first heard about plans for the base camp in early October because they were anxious about the impact of thousands of migrants moving into the neighborhood, they said.
“We oppose the construction of refugee camps here. We are uneasy and scared,” read a sign hung up on the fence of a house facing the proposed encampment site.
Jacquelyn Zuniga, 34, has lived in Brighton Park for 15 years. She said she saw construction crews had been working at night, installing lights and pipes, and early this morning took it a step further and began leveling gravel. But despite the countless hours she and other residents have spent resisting the proposed encampment, they feel their messages to the city are going nowhere.
“You can’t bring issues up with the city when they’re neglecting to hear what you have to say,” Zuniga said.
The mayor announced his plan in September to erect the heated tent encampments for incoming migrants as they wait for a bed in the city’s shelter system, but the two pending locations at the Brighton Park lot and a shuttered Jewel-Osco at 115th and Halsted streets on the Far South Side have still not opened.
Reese said Monday that the former grocery store site too is under environmental assessment, with no state involvement.
As for whether Pritzker’s announcement signals the state is taking over from the city in running the base camp strategy, Reese said: “There are no additional base camps so that question is a bit premature.”
Ramirez, alderman of the Southwest Side ward where the lot is located, again voiced her frustrations this weekend in announcing the tents were going up despite protests from neighbors.
“The administration’s decision to proceed without addressing our concerns not only undermines transparency and efforts of co-governance,” she wrote, “but also disregards the well-being of everyone in our community, including the asylum-seekers who have come to our great city seeking safety and refuge.”
Ramirez referred to an environmental impact study conducted on the site, the results of which she said have yet to be shared with her or her constituents. She said her office had been informed of the presence of toxic metals in the soil, but even though the pollution had been remediated she still worried about the safety and health of new arrivals.
Local environmental justice activists have raised concerns about what testing, if any, has been carried out at the site. They also say the location proposed to house thousands of the city’s most vulnerable people is in an industrial zone near an interstate and was once home to a zinc smelter that might still render the land toxic.
“It is essential for residents of this community to be fully aware of the environmental impacts and potential risks associated with this project,” Ramirez said. “We have a right to know if the site is safe for both asylum-seekers and community members at large.”
Plans for the first migrant encampment with winterized tents to be set up at Brighton Park were floated around mid-October. The city’s six-month, $548,400 land use contract for the site at 3710 S. California Ave. was approved shortly after, eliciting objections from Ramirez, who said she had not been notified the lease for the site in her ward had been signed.
Growing tensions have spilled out a few times since residents in the Southwest Side neighborhood first got wind of the city’s plans: A crowd swarmed Ramirez at a protest and a few days later a group scuffled with police ahead of a community meeting.
Meanwhile, the Little Village site will be in a former CVS store in the 2600 block of South Pulaski Road, where city and state officials have been talking about opening a shelter since at least May.
The site would be able to house about 200 migrants, said Rachel Otwell, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.
GardaWorld, which will run day-to-day operations at both the tent encampment and the CVS site, has been integral in developing those plans after working with the state on previous endeavors to convert a former Kmart store into a shelter. Those plans have not come to fruition.
As of Monday, more than 22,600 migrants have arrived in Chicago in the last 15 months, per city data. But as wintry weather continues, the Johnson administration has emptied out eight of the 21 police stations where mini-tent cities had cropped up and families often slept on lobby floors in squalid conditions.
Now 1,200 migrants remain at the Chicago police districts, with another 170 at O’Hare International Airport. That’s down from a peak of about 3,800 migrants across the stations and airports. Another 12,800 of them were at the city-run shelters.
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