Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is exploring unspecified backup plans should it not hit its goal of setting up tent base camps for new asylum-seekers before winter, a top deputy said Thursday while also pushing back at comments from Gov. J.B. Pritzker that more state funds for migrant services aren’t going to be made available anytime soon.
With winter fast approaching and temperatures expected to dip into the low 40s in the next few days, Johnson’s deputy chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas said the strategy announced one month ago to erect tent encampments throughout the city still has no start date and that no sites have been finalized because of the need to “do our due diligence.”
Her comments came as Pritzker appeared to close the door on any more state money being allocated for migrant relief by state lawmakers, who are meeting later this month and next for their fall veto session.
“It isn’t as if we’re coming in with enormous surpluses,” Pritzker told reporters Thursday. “This is not something where we have hundreds of millions of dollars to support.”
Asked about the governor’s comments, Pacione-Zayas, a former state senator, responded: “We have to continue to educate the General Assembly about this critical point that we’re in.”
“We have to go through the exercise, right? We have to identify what’s already committed, and might be able to be directed,” she said. “We have to think outside of the box and be creative around this, and so I don’t see the discussions (as) closed. I think that this needs to be ongoing. And as I’ve said before, everyone has to do more.”
Pacione-Zayas added that the mayor’s administration has begun meeting with individual state legislators and will ask the state to look for ways to shift existing budget allocations toward an additional migrant appropriation for Chicago, which has taken on the brunt of the new arrivals in Illinois.
Late Thursday, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch was spotted at City Hall and headed up toward the mayor’s office on the fifth floor.
Johnson and Pritzker also have sought assistance from the federal government, with both talking to White House officials last weekend and the governor writing a three-page letter to President Joe Biden to argue Washington needs to step up on the issue.
Pacione-Zayas said that the cold weather expected in upcoming days poses a “grave concern,” though she said the mayor’s office remains hopeful it can “put some stakes into the ground soon” for the tent encampments.
The city aims to use those encampments to relocate people now staying in the city’s two main airports, Chicago police station lobbies and other unsuitable places until spots open in the nearly two-dozen brick-and-mortar shelters the city is running.
Johnson rolled out the tent city proposal in early September, vowing to get it done before winter. But the mayor faced criticism from some aldermen and advocacy groups over his team’s decision to bring in a controversial private security company to run the base camps.
“As far as the delay, I mean, welcome to government. This is how it kind of works,” Pacione-Zayas said. “As far as what our backup plan is, we are exploring what could be alternative large spaces with the state, with the county, so that if we’re not able to pop up this base camp in time for a significant drop, that we do have some alternatives. But everything’s on the table.”
She added that some of those backup sites are located outside of Chicago.
County officials confirmed Thursday they are helping with the search. At Johnson’s request, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she asked suburban municipalities to share some of the burden.
“They were not prepared to make commitments unless they got resources to do it,” Preckwinkle said during an interview with the Tribune’s Editorial Board, though it was unclear when those conversations took place. “That’s why we need money from the feds.”
Preckwinkle’s chief of staff, Lanetta Haynes Turner, added: “We have been very closely coordinating with the city to at least identify locations for housing both within the city of Chicago and, of course, if we are aware of locations, potentially in suburban Cook.”
“We have been, through our emergency management and real estate office, compiling a very detailed inventory of county facilities and other locations,” Haynes Turner said. “We’re also planning to provide any locations that are within the city limits from some of our brokers.”
As of Thursday, more than 17,000 migrants have come to Chicago since August 2022, when the flow of buses from Texas and other southern border states first started. More than 10,100 are in city-run shelters, while another 2,400 are in Chicago police stations and 820 at the city airports. More than 11 buses were expected to arrive Thursday.
Pritzker, meanwhile, defended the state’s support for Chicago following a City Council hearing last week that saw multiple Johnson allies lash out at the governor’s administration and call for him to take on more of the burden. The state has appropriated roughly $330 million toward asylum-seekers since the first busload of migrants was sent by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but not all of that has gone directly to the city to cover its costs.
“This is a challenge I think the city has been facing since the beginning. We don’t do city planning at the state level. This is a question best directed to the city,” Pritzker said Thursday when asked how his administration will brace for the next wave of new arrivals. “As they have developed plans, and as they’ve implemented them, we’ve been there in support.”
Pacione-Zayas said Johnson is still planning a trip to the border to establish some order in how the buses are being sent to Chicago, but that no schedule has been set. The city is bracing for up to 25 buses a day this week.
“Ultimately the goal is so that we have tighter coordination,” she said.
She also rebutted criticism of Chicago’s response to the migrant crisis and those who are calling on the city to turn away asylum-seekers.
“We are upholding our values. We are operationalizing our sanctuary city status. We are holding the line,” Pacione-Zayas said. “This is a welcoming state, so there would be some challenges that it would present if we were to shut our doors as well. I mean, we’re going to do this as long as we can. This is precisely why everyone must do more.”
Preckwinkle, too, repeated the need for both federal and state money to respond to the crisis. The county has been providing health care services to migrants, a cost that has varied by month but currently stands at $2.2 million.
That care has “run the gamut,” officials said, from vaccinations, health care screenings, mental health services, treatment of wounds and infections, to maternal and infant care. Until February, the state was helping pick up some of the tab. With an expected influx of more buses and planes arriving in the coming months, county officials think that monthly cost will rise. Migrant patient volumes have increased 30% to 40% in recent weeks, Cook County Health CEO Israel Rocha said.
While she said she would continue to advocate for a federal solution, Preckwinkle said “the state needs to step up as well, because $42.5 million barely covers the city’s costs for a month,” she said, describing the sum that the state recently announced in awards to local governments as a “drop in the bucket.”
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