(NewsNation) — Nearly three dozen migrants and asylum seekers who have been staying in Chicago-run shelters will be among the first to be evicted this weekend as part of Mayor Brandon Johnson‘s 60-day shelter exit policy, city officials announced on Friday.
However, the 35 new arrivals that will leave three city shelters represent a much lower number of evictions that will take place after Johnson’s office announced modifications to its current 60-day shelter exit program on Friday.
The exemptions allow migrants who are parents of Chicago Public Schools students a repreive, along with others who meet other requirements to remain in the shelters where they have been staying since being bused to Chicago by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
However, city officials said Friday that Abbott’s continued busing migrants to cities like Chicago without notice has put many of the aspects of managing the migrant crisis out of city’s control.
Friday’s announcement comes as a measles outbreak in the city’s largest migrant shelter forced the Johnson administration to reconsider its position on how long migrants would be permitted to remain in temporary housing. As part of the modifications to Johnson’s 60-day shelter policy, all migrants living in city-run shelters will be required to be vaccinated for the measles and other viruses, city health officials said on Friday.
As of Friday, 11,200 migrants are living in city and state-run shelters and migrants have remained in shelters for an average of 94 days.
Cristina Pacionze-Zayas, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, said Friday that those who will be evicted on Sunday will be notified by case managers within the shelter system on Friday. More than 200 other migrants face eviction by the end of March before another 2,200 will be forced to leave by the end of April, city officials said.
A total of 2,026 migrants will face eviction by the end of April, city officials announce. All of those facing evictions do not qualify for any of the exemptions announced under the modified version of Johnson’s exit plan.
Before Friday’s announcement, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers living in 23 city-run shelters in Chicago were in limbo Johnson was still deliberating whether to stick with his current 60-day policy that
would force some migrants out of temporary housing on Saturday.
However, Pacionze-Zayas said that no migrants were ever scheduled to leave on Saturday. She said evaluating the policy has remained a fluid operation, made more uncertain by the outbreak of the 10 measles cases within the migrant shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
Johnson said on Wednesday that he planned to move ahead with keeping the deadline in place after twice delaying it due to cold temperatures earlier this year. However, after the Chicago Department of Public Health announced two more confirmed measles cases at the city’s largest shelter on Thursday, a Chicago Alderman leading a coalition of local leaders told NewsNation that Johnson was still deliberating the policy.
The mayor referred to the crisis as a “jacked-up situation” earlier this week and criticized the government for not providing more assistance.
Ald. Andre Vasquez sent a letter to Johnson on Tuesday, imploring the mayor to hold off on imposing the deadline. The letter said that moving ahead with the deadline would just exasperate the problem and could add to Chicago’s homeless population.
On Wednesday, Johnson called the situation “jacked up” and said that city-run shelters were always meant to be emergency temporary housing. He said that the expected 5,600 migrants who face eviction could always go back to the city’s landing zone and re-apply for placement in shelters.
Johnson said he is “very sympathetic” to concerns but says he has not received the level of assistance from the federal government to make managing the migrant crisis feasible.
Vasquez, who led a coalition of 22 alderpersons to try to get the mayor to reconsider imposing the 60-day deadline, said that migrants aren’t the only people facing unanswered questions.
Vasquez says that the measles outbreak at the Pilsen shelter where folks need to be quarantined for 21 days has complicated the issue.
“I think for me, I have separate questions if they are going forward with (the deadline),” Vasquez said. “For example, how many folks are getting evicted per day? What are the different exceptions? How many people are in each category of exemptions?
“I’ve got a lot of questions. …I think if you’re going to move forward with a policy like that, you have to explain it to people. You have to show your work as how it’s going to play out.”
