Hundreds of immigrants in Chicago are living on buses — with some desperately digging through trash cans for food — as the Windy City’s shelter system groans under the onslaught of asylum seekers.
With an estimated 34,000 immigrants arriving in Chicago in the past 16 months — and busloads of new arrivals continuing to arrive on a regular basis — the city has initially turned to its police precincts to help house the crowds.
But Chicago officials put the kibosh on the move in December, and with the city’s 27 designated shelters still stretched to capacity, authorities have been forced to find other housing options while immigrants scramble for empty necessities.
Eight so-called “warm-up buses” were added to the West Loop last month to try to ease some of the burden, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Creature comforts have been in short supply inside the cramped buses as the city struggles to provide basic necessities such as food and shower facilities on site. Most of the migrants, including families, had to survive on little more than a packet of oatmeal and a Nutri-Grain bar donated by volunteers, the report said.
“If you are not given food, you go to extreme measures,” Robinson Mendez, 30, from Venezuela told the outlet.
Chicago has struggled to provide adequate housing for the city’s 34,000 newly arrived immigrants, with the situation worsening in late December when police stations stopped serving as temporary shelters. AP
“You look for food in the trash.”
Mendez described a scene he recently witnessed where three sandwich boxes found in a trash can sparked a feeding frenzy among hungry migrants, who quickly shoveled the discarded food into their mouths.
Attempts to provide adequate shower facilities to Chicago’s asylum seekers have also run into difficulties.
Local volunteer Annie Gomberg contacted ShowerUp, a charity that provides mobile showers for homeless people living outside, but upon arriving at the West Loop landing zone, city officials told the organization they didn’t have the necessary electricity and water they needed. provide.
Hundreds of Chicago migrants have piled into eight city buses parked at the Office of Emergency Management’s landing zone for a warm night’s sleep. Reuters
Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications representative Mary May told the Tribune that her agency was unable to accommodate the volunteer group’s request because they did not communicate their intentions to the city in advance.
“Staff from the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications were unaware of this and without advance notice could not make appropriate arrangements to accommodate them,” May said.
“This includes access to water connections for portable shower trailers that can only be turned on with advance notice. It is not an easy procedure,” said the lawyer.
As a result, migrants on buses have been without running water for days, the outlet said.
“Everyone here is like a warehouse,” Gomberg told the outlet. “They don’t know what happened and they don’t know what really happened. We will go through a week of these people not having access to sanitation.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has urged the Biden administration for more federal funding to help the city cope with the rapid influx of immigrants. TNS
At a Dec. 27 virtual meeting, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson joined New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston in asking the Biden administration to provide more federal resources to help their cities cope with their growing immigrant populations.
New York City has been in crisis for months over the tens of thousands of immigrants it has welcomed since the spring of 2022, creating tent cities in parks and sometimes using public school gyms to help deal with its flooding — while cutting services as it grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget gap. dollars.
“All of our cities have reached the point where we’re close to capacity or close to no room,” Johnston said.
The situation at the state level is also the same.
Last week, Illinois announced plans to set up a reception center for new arrivals at a bus landing zone in Chicago, which the state said would include half a dozen heated tents, but offered no specific timeline beyond “in the coming weeks.”
A press release issued by the government on Wednesday said the reception centers “are not intended to provide shelter” for migrants but rather as a temporary stopover on their way to accommodation elsewhere.
“It is designed to help individuals upon arrival at the landing zone to receive expanded services and support in a more streamlined process and to reunite them with their friends and family and/or help them advance to other destinations to avoid unnecessary admission to shelters ,” the statement said.
Chicago officials have faced increasing pressure to provide healthier and cleaner accommodations for newly arrived asylum seekers after the death of Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, 5, who fell ill while sheltering in a Lower West Side warehouse with thousands of other immigrants, the Tribune wrote.
Some immigrants find everyday Chicagoans more sympathetic to their plight than the city itself.
“People on the streets help us more than the city. They gave us clothes, jackets,” 23-year-old Angelo Traviezo told the outlet, expressing shock that he had to search for food in garbage cans since arriving in Chicago.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
