Some people working near the Federal Building downtown Chicago said they feel blindsided after learning the former Standard Club is now being used as a temporary shelter to house migrants.
“It would have been nice to get a little bit of a warning that we were going to get 300 to 400 people moving in across the street,” said Peter Letsos.
Letsos, the general manager of the nearby Plymouth Restaurant, said he believes city leaders should have been more transparent about the process from the beginning.
“I think this country was built from immigrants,” he said. “But the way they handled this situation, just throw everybody across the street into a closed down hotel room with no warning to the neighborhood, kinda not the right thing to do, I believe.”
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Video taken on Wednesday show migrants arriving near South Plymouth Court and West Jackson Boulevard. The city said the site has been serving as a temporary shelter since March.
“I saw a couple semi trucks of bags being unloaded and about two days later we saw yellow school buses just unloading a bunch of people,” Lestos said.
Multiple community groups have also stepped up to provide clothing and other resources for migrants. Because of the influx of new arrivals, many of them are now staying at police stations across the city.
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Ald. Sophia King, who represents the city's 4th Ward, where the former Standard Club sits, said she didn't "pre-approve any of the locations" in her ward.
"However, we have had several meetings and concerns with residents after migrants have arrived," she said. "This shouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”
She said the issue is one that needs a collaborative approach between federal, state, county and city officials.
"The accountability has to be spread across the country state, city and with the migrants as well as the countries they are fleeing from," King said. "We can’t all say not in our backyards. But by the same token we should be better prepared for this human crisis.”
Outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot addressed the humanitarian crisis at an event on Friday, calling on the federal government to help with the dire situation. She says Chicago is now seeing 200 new migrants per day.
“We got to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to support the people that are here,” she said. “But it doesn’t make sense for people to continue to come to Chicago when we are literally out of space.”
Last week, Lightfoot wrote a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asking him to stop bussing migrants from the southern border to Chicago and other U.S. cities.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office said last fall $90 million was dedicated to housing asylum seekers both in and out of Chicago. In total, the state and city has received more than $200 million in state and federal funding.
