City preparing to ‘right-size’ migrant shelters due to budget constraints

Asylum-seekers congregate outside and inside Chicago Transit Authority warming buses at Chicago’s designated landing zone for new migrant arrivals at 800 S. Desplaines St. in the West Loop. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)

Chicago is trying to shrink the city’s population of roughly 14,500 migrants in 28 shelters to accommodate “budget constraints,” city and state lawmakers have been told.

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), chair of the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, told him late last month of the city’s plan to, as she put it, “right-size” the migrant shelter system without offering details.