More than 10,000 asylum-seeking migrants have arrived in Chicago since the first bus sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrived in the city in late August 2022, according to city officials.
The continued influx comes as volunteers and elected officials work to accommodate arriving migrants with temporary shelters and other necessary resources.
According to a city spokesperson, 10,019 immigrants have arrived in Chicago in the past nine months, with 4,151 immigrants currently residing in temporary city shelters.
Of the more than 10,000 migrants who have arrived since last August, 5,573 arrived by bus while 4,446 people arrived in Chicago by other means.
The city’s response to arriving immigrants has served as a political flashpoint, with a tense meeting at Wilbur Wright College in Dunning showing a divide in how communities wish to respond.
In another area of the city, local officials and residents are working to integrate newcomers into the community.
A number of elementary school-age children who recently arrived in Chicago from Central and South America and are staying in temporary shelter in Little Village won’t get much relief after figuring out the books.
With summer for CPS students just a couple of weeks away, dozens of migrant children staying at a temporary shelter in Little Village joined a nearby elementary school earlier this week, Ald said. Mike Rodriguez (22) said.
“Even if it’s only two weeks, it’s two weeks,” he told the Sun-Times at an event near the school last week. “Children should be in school.”
The school, near 27th Street and Kostner Avenue, is about half a mile from where the local councilman set up a temporary migrant shelter in Piotrowski Park earlier in the month.
Rodriguez didn’t know exactly how many students would enroll, but he estimated that of the 200 immigrants there, about 40 to 50 children would join elementary school and up to a dozen high school-age students could soon enter Little Village High School. Lawndale.
“Despite the fact that this is a crisis, a man-made crisis, created by racist and xenophobic policies of southern governors, we must also see this as an opportunity to bring new energy and reinvigorated immigrant spirit to our community. . ,” he said.
“This reinforces who we are. We are welcoming, we are migrants, and the people who arrive become part of our society. They become taxpayers, renters, and ultimately homeowners, they fill our classrooms, they do essential work, that’s us.”
The welcome they have received is in stark contrast to the pushback immigrants have faced in some parts of the city.
“As an immigrant community, we are naturally positioned with resources and neighbors who are very welcoming to immigrants,” he said.
As much as the neighborhood has to offer immigrants, Rodriguez said their arrival could bode well for the neighborhood’s future.
“I hope they stay and become a fabric of our community, as Mexican immigrants did decades ago, and Polish and Eastern European immigrants did a generation before them,” the councilman said.
CPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
