(NewsNation) — As thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers living in Chicago-run migrant shelters are set to be evicted on Saturday, a growing number of confirmed measles cases inside the city’s largest shelter has intensified the push for Mayor Brandon Johnson to again extend the deadline.
Ten measles cases have been confirmed at the shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood since March 8, including five new cases that were announced this week, the Chicago Department of Public Health said. Two other measles cases have been announced in Chicago outside of the shelter with six adults and six children, health officals said. Two new cases at the migrant shelter were announced by the city on Thursday night.
These cases are the first reported in Chicago since 2019. A team from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention is in Chicago to help address the measles outbreak.
Despite the measles issue, Johnson announced Wednesday that the city will continue to enforce its 60-day limit on shelter stays for migrants who have been housed by the city for two months.
The Johnson administration had previously stated that about 5,600 migrants could be in that group, the Chicago Tribune reported.
While addressing questions about the deadline Wednesday, Johnson told reporters that “there will be exceptions” without specifying how many people would be forced to move. Johnson said that he wasn’t sure that the number of evicted migrants was “substantial” but said that those who are evicted could return to the city’s migrant landing zone — the site where migrants first go when they arrive from Texas.
Johnson referred to the crisis as a “jacked up situation” and blamed the federal government for not providing more assistance to sanctuary cities like Chicago in dealing with the influx of migrants. In Chicago, more than 37,000 migrants and asylum seekers have been bused to the city by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“The ultimate goal is to move people to resettlement or out-migration,” Johnson told reporters. “What this policy has essentially done, it has given us the opportunity to have real substantive conversations with migrants to help them move on.”
Since Wednesday, a Johnson spokesman has declined to provide answers whether the mayor would move ahead with the deadline.
The effort to vaccinate migrants
The five new confirmed measles have been reported after come more than 900 of the more than 1,800 migrants living in the Pilsen facility were vaccinated for measles over the weekend. A CDC team arrived in Chicago this week to address the outbreak of measles, which health officials say is part of an increase in cases of the disease nationally.
Before Wednesday’s announcement, Johnson had not addressed his plans for migrants ahead of the eviction date, many of whom are not eligible for work or state-supported rental assistance to move into new housing.
A CDC spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday about how evictions affect the agency’s support plan.
On Tuesday, city health officials said they are working with the Department of Family and Support Services and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications to relocate Pilsen shelter residents to designated hotel spaces and other shelter locations to create more room for quarantine. State officials announced that those needing to be quaratined would be moved to a local hotel beginning on Monday.
Those who were vaccinated over the weekend were told they needed to quarantine for 21 days and watch for symptoms.
The pushback against eviction
Residents living at the shelter have told NewsNation affiliate WGN that conditions inside the facility are inhumane. They have described conditions inside the facility as overcrowded and a setting in which all of the more than 1,800 residents – including 95 toddlers ages 2 or under – are all sleeping in one open room.
A coalition of Chicago alderpersons, led by Andre Vasquez, sent a letter to Johnson on Tuesday, imploring the mayor to again delay evicting migrants Friday. In the letter, Vasquez writes that Friday’s eviction deadline “risks cutting against Chicago’s values and severely harming the same new arrivals Chicago has worked diligently to care for.”
He continued that rather than solving the city’s challenges in dealing with the ongoing migrant crisis, the deadline “merely exacerbates and displaces” the issue.
Vasquez writes that if the deadline is not extended, migrants who have not yet secured housing or work permits could face potentially unsheltered homelessness. Vasquez referred to the measles outbreak as a “public health concern” that could be made worse if they are forced out of the shelters and into Chicago’s streets.
He said that 80% of new arrivals do not have access to work authorization and that 50% are not eligible for state-funded rental assistance that would allow them to find housing. Vasquez told NewsNation on Thursday that he received word from the Johnson administration on Wednesday that it was still deliberating on whether to move ahead with the 60-day deadline.
“I don’t know where it’s currently at,” Vasquez told NewsNation. “I’m just waiting to see and we’re what? About a day away from (the deadline) now?”
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 ff 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 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.”
In the meantime, city health officials said that the eight migrants waiting at Chicago’s landing zone have been vaccinated for measles. The health department is also sending teams to provide vaccinations at other shelters to try to stave off the chances of a spread of measles similar to the one at the Pilsen shelter.
Like Johnson, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who represents the Pilsen neighborhood, told NewsNation after the first measles case was announced that anti-vaccination messaging plays a role in dealing with the outbreak. While the city health department has said that most Chicagoans are not in danger, that number does not include those migrants who could be facing being without a home this weekend.
“The politicization of public health matters is dangerous, as we saw during the (COVID-19) pandemic,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “And it’s dangerous still no matter the rationale that is given … words are damaging.”