City gets $160 million from state to address migrant crisis

Thousands of asylum-seekers, including those camped at the Austin District police station in September, have been arriving in Chicago over the past year. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file photo)

Chicago’s insufficient funding for migrant arrivals will get help from the state with $160 million for an intake center, a winterized tent shelter and other assistance aimed at addressing the bottlenecks keeping migrants from resettling, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday.

Pritzker’s announcement comes a day after 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 crisis.

Almost 25,000 migrants have been bussed or flown to the city since last year. Sheltering, feeding and resettling them has been a major strain on the city’s resources over the past year.

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 has left thousands of migrants sleeping at makeshift, temporary locations, such as police stations.

The state will provide $65 million for a winterized tent shelter site where up to 2,000 migrants can stay for as long as 6 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.

The state-funded plan to be rolled out in 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 last month. 

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.

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)

Cook County Health has been providing medical care for migrants in city shelters. So far, more than 16,000 patients have been seen, a county spokesperson said. 

That care often requires migrants to be housed in a city shelter, leaving thousands more at police stations and airports reliant on emergency room visits or volunteer medical assistance.

The county has spent more than $30 million on the effort.

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.