Migrants flown to Chicago by charities in San Antonio, even with no place to sleep
When migrants arrive in Chicago’s airports on flights paid for by Catholic Charities in San Antonio, they often have little to no money, connections or plan for what to do next.
Catholic Charities in Chicago is not there to greet them because its counterpart in Texas does not coordinate with it. Few of the migrants have friends or family here to meet them.
While Catholic Charities in Chicago has stepped in to provide clothing and hundreds of hot meals to asylum-seekers and has been involved in the state’s resettlement program, it is now also paying the tab with Illinois taxpayer money to send migrants back to Texas and elsewhere.
As Chicago’s notoriously brutal winter looms, city officials and residents alike are alarmed by the relentless arrival of migrants sent here not only by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but also through federally funded efforts from religious groups such as Catholic Charities in San Antonio.
The haphazard transferral of migrants not only calls into question the best use of taxpayer money and donations, but also fosters discussion about the moral obligations of faith-based groups.
William Schweiker, a professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago, said the way the church and the state are working together to help move migrants to a city with subfreezing temperatures goes against the Christian responsibility to care for homeless people.
“In my judgment, to take people who have sought to escape poverty and to move them to some other city they do not know, is morally abhorrent,” he said. “Are we committed to the equal dignity of all human beings?”
Last month, migrants in Chicago — who are mostly from tropical Venezuela — had their first encounter with freezing temperatures during the season’s first snowfall, and the reality of what’s to come was too much for some to bear. Andrelys Leon, 28, who had been living at the 12th District police station in Little Italy with her 7-year-old son, packed up her things that day and walked the 1.3 miles to the Greyhound station to catch a bus back to San Antonio.
“At least it is not that cold over there,” she said in Spanish. “We can take it, but not the children.”
More than 20,700 migrants have come to Chicago since August 2022, mostly by buses and planes. When they arrive, they are funneled into the city’s maxed-out shelter system — a process run by the Office of Emergency Management — and wait for placement in one of 25 abandoned schools, warehouses and buildings around the city now housing migrants. The waiting list can be months long.
The city’s resources have been stretched to the brink with the chaotic and sudden arrival of thousands of people. Homeless shelters that never recovered from decreased COVID-19 bed availability are filled to capacity, and roughly 3,000 migrants now sleep on the floors of the city’s airports and police stations, or camp outside.
Arielis Torrealba, 22, said at first she was grateful that Catholic Charities in San Antonio paid for her airplane ticket to Chicago.
But as the mother and son from Venezuela spent their 21st day of sleeping on the lobby floor of the bus/shuttle center — an area below the airport parking garage the city has converted into a temporary shelter for hundreds of migrants awaiting placement in city-run shelters — she was starting to second-guess their journey to Chicago.