Re: As Buses of Migrants Arrive in Sanctuary City Chicago Suburbs, Residents Debate the Role of Their Towns

On 21 Feb 2022, Molly Bolt <[email protected]> posted some
news:[email protected]: 

> Do Biden and Harris suck or what?

WILMETTE, Ill. — In different times, the tiny brick Metra station in the 
town of Wilmette in suburban Chicago was just a place where commuters 
grabbed lattes and waited on black metal benches before boarding trains to 
the city.

These days, it has also become a welcome center of sorts for migrants.

Large cardboard boxes full of coats, hats and gloves are tidily arranged 
along one wall. Volunteers are working there daily, accepting donations of 
socks, puffy North Face jackets, snow pants and bars of soap. When 
busloads of migrants are dropped off in Wilmette — where their chaperones 
help them catch trains to downtown Chicago to be transferred to a shelter 
— they are first met by volunteers at the Wilmette station and given a few 
essentials.

The migrant crisis in Chicago is intensifying well beyond the city limits. 
For more than a month, city officials said, buses from Texas have avoided 
Chicago entirely, dropping hundreds of migrants in suburbs that have been 
given no warning that they are en route. In December, Chicago enacted 
penalties for bus operators who drop off passengers outside of designated 
times and locations or without a permit. The dynamic has played out 
elsewhere as well, sending some migrants to New Jersey suburbs of New York 
City.

As the suburban drop-offs near Chicago have grown in number, residents who 
are concerned about the well-being of the migrants have raised funds and 
collected supplies. Many municipalities have quickly passed rules limiting 
buses similar to the restrictions set in Chicago, hoping to stay out of 
the fray. And some suburban residents are approaching their elected 
officials with growing alarm, making their feelings clear: We don’t want 
any part of the migrant crisis.

In Wilmette, a town of 27,000 people where the median household income is 
about $183,000, dozens of residents have mobilized to help the migrants 
with clothing and other needs before they board trains for the so-called 
landing zone in downtown Chicago, where they are then routed to shelters 
around the city.

Jessica Leving Siegel, a nonprofit marketing consultant, lugged trash bags 
around the Metra station one evening last week and directed fellow 
volunteers. Ms. Leving Siegel, who wore a messy bun and a maroon T-shirt 
printed with the words “We are all refugees,” has organized clothing 
drives and helped migrants make money by shoveling snowy sidewalks in 
Wilmette.

“What I would like is for us to become the suburban landing zone,” she 
said.

Perhaps the town could also find landlords willing to rent to migrant 
families, she suggested. Or volunteers in Wilmette could open a “free 
store” modeled after those in Chicago that offer donated items to asylum 
seekers in need.

If Chicago is overwhelmed by the flow of migrants, Ms. Leving Siegel said, 
there should be a role for suburban communities, too.

“We clearly have so many people who want to help,” she said. “Instead of 
just saying, ‘As we shuffle you onto the Metra, we’ll throw a coat on 
you,’ I think there is a lot more that we could do.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, who leads a city of 2.7 million people, 
has signaled that he wants other Illinois cities to help accommodate the 
newly arrived migrants.

On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson said he would like Gov. J.B. Pritzker of 
Illinois, a fellow Democrat, to set up new shelters for migrants outside 
of Chicago. While there are already 28 shelters in the city, Mr. Johnson 
said Chicago’s resources are stretched by the number of new migrants in 
its care — more than 14,000, at last count — and he has no plans to create 
more shelters.

“Shelters do not have to solely be set up and built in the city of 
Chicago,” Mr. Johnson said. “The state can do it wherever they want.”

Oak Park, a city just west of Chicago, has devoted hundreds of thousands 
of dollars to support migrants, including federal funds, and last week it 
extended shelter aid for another month. Other suburbs have seemed far less 
eager to become involved.

Mayor Mike Turner of Woodstock, Ill., said that he felt sympathy for the 
migrant families who were unexpectedly dropped off in his town in late 
December and then transported on a commuter train to Chicago, about an 
hour to the southeast.

But Mr. Turner, who described himself as “a bleeding-heart-liberal 
conservative” in charge of a diverse city with a sizable Latino 
population, said the issue came down to resources.

“There’s folks who think, well, maybe we should be doing more,” he said. 
“We all agree that these people matter because they’re human beings. But 
we don’t have the ability to manage immigration long term.”

Woodstock, like many other small towns, does not have homeless shelters or 
a robust government infrastructure that could provide housing or other 
significant needs to migrants from Venezuela, the country where most 
asylum seekers have come from.

When Mr. Turner talks to other mayors in the Chicago area, he said, “We 
all agree that this is not something that we, as smaller municipalities, 
can manage.”

Mary May, a spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Management and 
Communications in Chicago, said that the last bus to drop newly arrived 
migrants in the city was on the night of Dec. 25. Because it violated city 
rules about drop-off hours and notification requirements — the bus was 
impounded, causing some to wonder if bus operators were now reluctant to 
enter Chicago. A similar phenomenon has played out in New Jersey, as 
busloads of migrants bound for New York City have been dropped in the 
suburbs to skirt city rules.

A spokesman for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican who has pressed to 
send new migrants to cities like Chicago, did not respond to an email 
seeking comment.

Buses are still allowed to take migrants to downtown Chicago, provided 
they follow the city’s rules, leading some people to wonder why the 
suburban drop-offs are becoming the norm.

“I think it’s just to cause more problems, to cause more confusion,” said 
Michele Carney, a volunteer with the nonprofit Nuevos Vecinos, as she 
picked up a surplus of donated items in Wilmette that she intended to 
bring back to migrants in the city. “They’re driving past Chicago to get 
all the way up to Wilmette. Why?”

In Naperville, a prosperous suburb of Chicago that is the fourth-largest 
city in Illinois, one City Council member has pushed back on the notion 
that any public funds should be used to support asylum seekers.

Josh McBroom, who describes himself as politically conservative, dryly 
suggested at a recent council meeting that Naperville residents who are in 
favor of helping migrant families were welcome to host them in their own 
homes.

In an interview, Mr. McBroom said that no one has taken him up on his idea 
so far.

Instead, he said, the unspoken wish by many residents is for migrants to 
leave Naperville as quickly as they arrive. “Get on the train, go to 
Chicago, nice to meet you but keep moving,” he said, voicing what he 
believes to be a dominant attitude in town.

Ida Fiore, a volunteer from Lake Forest, Ill., who has helped organize 
care packages for migrants, said that ever since a busload of migrants 
arrived in nearby Highland Park in December, city officials and residents 
have worked to gather supplies for them.

The migrant crisis that has been increasingly visible in Chicago since 
late 2022 — with families sitting on sidewalks in the Loop and other 
neighborhoods, asking for money on cardboard signs — has felt more distant 
in the suburbs until recently, she said.

“The crisis is so obvious in the city,” Ms. Fiore said. “We’re asking 
ourselves, ‘What is the housing scenario for these people? Can a suburb 
provide any support and relief in the long term?’ And we all look at each 
other and have a lot more questions than answers.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as-buses-of-migrants-arrive-in-chicago-
suburbs-residents-debate-the-role-of-their-towns/ar-BB1hqEVw