An immigrant died Friday morning at a shuttered elementary school in Woodlawn that’s being used as a temporary shelter, marking the first publicly known death at a city-owned facility since a flood of immigrants began arriving in Chicago last year.
Officers responded about 6:15 a.m. to a call of a 26-year-old man who was “foaming at the mouth and unresponsive” at the old Wadsworth Elementary School building, 6420 S. University Ave., according to an alert from the Chicago Police Department obtained by the Sun-Times. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
A police spokesperson didn’t provide any additional information but said detectives were conducting a death investigation, indicating the fatality isn’t thought to be criminal in nature.
Natalia Derevyanny, a spokeswoman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office, said an autopsy hasn’t been conducted. The man hasn’t been publicly identified because his family hasn’t been notified of his death, she said.
The death comes as the city grapples with a growing immigrant crisis that has led to racially charged public debates over funding to support the influx of arrivals and where to house them.
Since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending immigrants to Chicago by bus and plane last August, more than 8,000 have arrived, mostly from Central and South America.
The proposal to turn Wadsworth Elementary into a respite center stirred controversy among Woodlawn residents, leading to allegations of racism against some Black residents who opposed the plan. Local Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) said the first known death of an immigrant will only exacerbate community concerns.
“I just want to make sure it wasn’t a fight, a shooting or anything like that,” Taylor said. “But it’s a death, so people are definitely going to be concerned. And because it was there, we got to make sure that he wasn’t sick [and] it wasn’t disease.”
A cathartic and racially charged debate in the City Council Wednesday reduced Taylor to tears as she explained how torn she was about supporting the use of surplus funds to house, feed and care for migrants when the needs of Chicago’s Black residents continue to be ignored.
“Don’t let these tears fool you,” she said during the debate. “When I have these tears, it’s usually because I’m mad as hell and I want to fight.”
After airing her longstanding grievances, Taylor declared her intention to vote in favor of $51 million in funding, saying “it’s the right thing to help other people because, as Black people, that’s what we do.”
“But when the hell are you gonna help us?” she added.
Her colleagues gave her a standing ovation as voices from the gallery could be heard shouting “traitor” and “sellout.”
Taylor is a close ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the mayor’s choice to chair the City Council’s Education Committee. She said she plans to meet with him on Monday to “figure out next steps toward keeping the community and migrants safe.”
“We need to be transparent and talk about what’s the real plan to get people taken care of,” she said.
“A lot of that was never discussed with me, nor was it discussed with the community,” added Taylor, who claimed former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration had kept critical information from her.
She raised questions about how the shelter at Wadsworth is being run, and that 500 men were being housed there with just 80 women.
“That’s a recipe for disaster,” she said. “I’m concerned about that. Now with this death [and] not really knowing what happened, I’m concerned about the health issues that might be in there.”
She said she plans to urge Johnson to thoroughly examine “the spaces, how we take care of them and then what actually happens there.”
