Thread: 27 buses carrying migrants arrive in Chicago since Saturday as city moves forward wit

27 buses carrying migrants arrive in Chicago since Saturday as city moves forward with tent plan



Nell Salzman and Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune
Wed, September 27, 2023 at 9:48 PM EDT·5 min read



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27 buses carrying migrants arrive in Chicago since Saturday as city moves forward with tent plan

Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS
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CHICAGO — Osvalgo Montilla, 57, got off a charter bus in Chicago’s West Loop Wednesday afternoon after trekking thousands of miles from Venezuela, thinking about his wife of 25 years who was in a detention facility in Del Rio, Texas.

Montilla, a pharmacist in his home country with three grown children, had traveled to the United States and sat on a bus for 20 hours. But he was most worried about his wife, who he hadn’t seen in five days. When the couple entered the U.S. on Sept. 22, his wife, like thousands of other migrants, was arbitrarily selected to be put in a detention facility.

“Here there is employment. I want to grow — economically and personally,” he said in Spanish. “But my biggest worry is finding my wife.”

He wasn’t sure when or how he would reconnect with her.

Montilla is just one of the hundreds of new migrants who have arrived in Chicago in the past week with an uncertain future, as the number of asylum-seekers has surpassed 15,000 with the arrival of 27 buses since Saturday, including seven on Wednesday.

With the city running out of room to house them — as thousands sleep on police station floors and at airports awaiting shelter placement — Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday defended his administration’s decision to contract with a private security firm to help place the new asylum-seekers in base camps before winter.

What started as a political stunt by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an effort to criticize the nation’s immigration policies and relieve what he says are overburdened border towns in his state, has turned into a full-blown crisis for Chicago and other sanctuary cities, with volunteers scrambling to step up and fill in the gaps where the government can’t.

New York has seen surging numbers sent by the Texas governor, overwhelming the city’s homeless shelter system. Denver has resorted to buying one-way Greyhound and Amtrak tickets to other cities for recent arrivals.

While the number of buses sent to Chicago by Abbott has ebbed and flowed over the past year, the two buses that arrived from El Paso, Texas, over the weekend — the first from that city since December 2022 — could indicate that border crossings are at one of the highest rates in recent history and the city could see an increase in buses in the coming weeks.

“Why can’t we send 1,000 people to Chicago?” asked Ruben García, director of Annunciation House, a migrant shelter in El Paso, Texas, where numbers of migrants are also soaring. “Obviously Chicago isn’t equipped, but we need to rise to the occasion. … We should be prepared for whatever comes our way.”

With resources strained in Texas, individuals such as Montilla are receiving all-expenses-paid tickets from the emergency departments in border cities — Del Rio, Eagle Pass, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville, McAllen — to sanctuary cities.

Catholic Charities in San Antonio are sending planes full of migrants to O’Hare International Airport.

With nowhere to put new arrivals, Johnson on Wednesday defended his administration’s decision to contract with a private security firm to help place them in base camps despite the company attracting controversy related to its handling of migrants elsewhere.

Addressing reporters after a special City Council meeting, the mayor said “we will never tolerate the violation of anyone’s human rights” in his first public comments on the one-year agreement with GardaWorld Federal Services and its subsidiary Aegis Defense Services signed Sept. 12.

“My administration has had very thorough conversations with GardaWorld,” Johnson said. “And so, all those allegations that have been presented, I take into consideration all of those dynamics.”

The mayor did not answer another question about the deadline to move migrants out of Chicago police stations as winter looms, though he did say, “We’re moving migrants into brick-and-mortar and at a rate that is expedited.”

“We are a sanctuary state. We are a sanctuary county, a sanctuary city,” Johnson said. “You know, this is a dynamic that we’re all working to solve. And you know, the political dynamics that have provoked this moment, it’s incumbent upon all of us to continue our work and the sacrifices that we all have to make to ensure that families get a chance to resettle and really experience comfort here.”

As Johnson addressed reporters, three buses of about 50 people each pulled up to the loading zone on a street by the Greyhound bus station downtown. Migrants carrying backpacks and trash bags, pregnant women and little girls wearing Crocs stepped off, walking onto Chicago’s streets for the first time. One bus came from Del Rio, one from El Paso, and one from Laredo.

Some migrants with familial connections in Chicago got into vans and left. They were handed bags of mini-cookies.

“Who needs a cellphone to make a call?” asked a city employee.

Most, however, boarded school buses provided by the city that were parked nearby. The migrants would be dropped off at police stations, where they would wait for placement in one of the 21 city-run shelters.

Elianny Piña, mother of two from Venezuela, watched her 4-year-old son Mateo play on a curb in the bus unloading zone, after getting off a bus from Laredo. Her family had trekked across the Darién Gap and ridden on La Bestia, a perilous freight train through Mexico.

Piña has two cousins in Chicago. She said she’s heard it’s a great city for sports, and hopes its large Spanish-speaking population will make it easier for her to find work.

“I came here for the future of my sons above all,” she said in Spanish.

Meanwhile, Montilla paced up and down on the sidewalk, waiting to board the yellow school bus to spend the night at a police station.

“Venezuela used to be such a rich country — in oil, tourism, health care, everything,” he said. “Chicago reminds me of a Venezuela of the past.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/27-buses-...014800940.html

“Venezuela used to be such a rich country — in oil, tourism, health care, everything,” he said. “Chicago reminds me of a Venezuela of the past.”


These overbreeding parasites destroyed Venezuela, they are destroying OUR healthcare system, our schools, our neighborhoods, our hotels, our streets, our tourism, and our economy. They are bankrupting us.

Shut these Churches and NGO's down! Send them back home. They are turning us into the filthy dump they left!