While the initial, unexpected arrival of migrants from Central and South America to Chicago was a breaking news story in and of itself, there have been numerous times over the past 19 months where there’s been sudden developments that Block Club reporters have leapt into action to cover. This is partly because Chicago has struggled again and again to respond to the crisis: Migrants have had to sleep on police station floors or outside in tents, have struggled to find housing and schools where staff speak Spanish, have dealt with overcrwoded and unsanitary conditions in city-run shelters and have seen a measles outbreak and the death of a 5-year-old from various infections while he stayed in a shelter.
In one instance this fall, Block Club’s reporters heard from sources that migrants were being forced to sleep on the sidewalks outside police stations in sub-freezing temperatures — while City Council leaders fought among themselves over plans on how to house them.
When migrants first started arriving, Chicago’s leaders pledged that asylum seekers would be welcomed and taken care of. However, the city ran out of space in its brick-and-mortar shelters and resorted to directing migrants to police stations wait for a bed to become available. People waited hours at police stations — then days, then weeks, until it became de-facto city policy to convert stations into stopgap shelters. At its peak, more than 3,000 adults and children were sleeping in police station lobbies. The conditions were described by migrants and the volunteers working with them as “inhumane.”
City leaders assured Chicagoans they were working to clear out stations and find suitable housing for individuals and families, but action was slow. By the time Chicago weather dipped below freezing and snow was falling, people were still living in police stations, some even forced to sleep in tents outside because the lobbies were too full.
Block Club reporters spread out across the city to cover this development in the crisis as soon as we heard, forcing officials and neighbors to confront the way migrants were being treated.
In another case, Block Club’s reporters were covering a measles outbreak in the city when sources told our reporters that city workers at Chicago’s largest shelters for migrants had come in during the middle of the night, woken migrants up to announce a quarantine and locked people inside, threatening those who left. Migrants were confused and fearful.
Block Club was able to confirm what had happened and, again, shed light on the city’s treatment of migrants.
