Johnson, suburban mayors to talk state of Chicago migrant crisis
As bus operators carrying migrants from the Texas border continue dropping new arrivals in suburbs far from Chicago’s designated “landing zone,” Mayor Brandon Johnson and other metropolitan area leaders will convene Tuesday to come up with a response.
The goal of the upcoming Metropolitan Mayors Caucus meeting is to develop a “plan for coordination and advocacy for additional support,” Johnson said in a news release. “This collaboration is essential for maintaining a humane regional response.”
More than 100 migrant buses have been dropped off outside city limits in the past six weeks, according to a Sun-Times analysis of data shared by the city, many left at train stations.
By bringing together leaders from the 275 metropolitan area cities, towns and villages, the group hopes to coordinate a more unified response to migrant bus arrivals.
Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns, chair of the caucus, called the gathering a “critical next step to strengthen our collective efforts,” adding their goal was to learn from each other.
The event, scheduled for Tuesday at the United Center, comes as the city’s efforts to track migrant arrivals has been thrown into disarray.
Around 40,000 migrants have arrived in the city since August 2022. Around 14,500 in 28 city shelters and several hundred are staying on warming buses at the city’s designated “landing zone” for arrivals.
The state is setting up an intake center at that site where migrants will be able to get tickets to move beyond the city or reapply for shelter after reaching their 60-day limit, with the first evictions now planned for Jan. 22.
The city, however, has completely lost the thread of when, where and how many migrants are arriving since passing an ordinance in November limiting drop-offs to weekday business hours.
The began citing bus operators for violating rules then and impounded two buses.
Bus operators in turn began leaving migrants in surrounding suburbs, dropping migrants at train stations to complete their journey to Chicago via rail or leaving them at highway pit stops.
Municipalities have tried pushing back with ordinances that include regulating bus arrivals, shelter openings and symbolic non-sanctuary city motions.
Many of those municipalities are within the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also began sending migrants via charter plane, though Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has moved to prevent companies from leasing their planes to the state of Texas.
Last year, the state and city tried coordinating with bus operators and organizations at the border to try to gauge timing of drops, with limited success.
So far, no municipality has come up with an effective way to regulate Abbott’s program.
New York City enacted its own bus regulations in December, as a nod to Chicago’s policies.
That produced similar results, with buses there bringing migrants to suburbs instead.
A spokeswoman from the office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the East Coast mayor and others were pressing for some of the same coordinated advocacy expected to happen in Chicago on Tuesday.
“Our biggest ask is to have them to join in executive action,” said spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak, referring to leaders demanding better information from Abbott and Texas bus operators, like New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy who called out buses leaving migrants in the Garden State just shy of New York City. “The more coalitions we can build the better.”
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.