Four hundred asylum seekers could be housed at Wilbur Wright College starting June 1 — and remain on the Northwest Side campus until Aug. 1 — to minimize the need for migrant families to sleep on the floors of Chicago police stations, a top mayoral aide said Friday.
Rich Guidice, Mayor Brandon’s Johnson’s chief of staff, said Wright College, 4300 N. Narragansett Ave., is under serious consideration as a new respite center to “alleviate some of the pressure on the police stations.”
“We have a lot of migrants inside our police stations. There’s challenges with that, giving them space issues, the public having access to the building, stuff like that,” Guidice told the Sun-Times.
“If there’s a facility that’s being under-utilized or it’s down for the season, that would be a better option for us.”
More than 500 families, many of them with young children, are sleeping on the floors of Chicago police stations. Some stations are so crowded with migrants, area residents are having a tough time getting to the front desk to file a crime report.
Guidice was asked whether using the gymnasium and community room at Wright would make that uncomfortable, unsanitary and downright dangerous situation unnecessary.
“No. I don’t think it’s big enough to do just that. But ideally, we’re looking for larger facilities or larger big-box type solutions. That’s kind of the goal we’re taking a look at. We’ve got a whole team of people evaluating these facilities… just to make sure that they’re safe and that we’re putting them into a safe environment,” Guidice said. “We’ll make some determinations relatively soon.”
Local Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) is circulating fliers asking his Dunning constituents to attend an “important community meeting” at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the city college in his ward.
Sposato said he expects a “boat-load” of security concerns to be aired at that meeting, including some of his own.
“Safety is a big concern of mine. Mainly safety for the migrants because you’ve got 400 strangers living together... Let’s say you have a family with a 16- or 17-year-old boy living with a 14- or 15-year-old girl,” Sposato said.
“When they’re going to shower or going to the bathroom, are they showering together? Do the girls go here and the boys go there? There’s just a lot of questions. Are they gonna make sure they have security there? Originally, they told me, `We’ll put special attention on it.’ That’s not good enough. I told them we’re gonna need 24/7 police and a 24/7 interpreter over there.”
Sposato said he is concerned about “the migrants being taken advantage of — from each other or strangers.”
“If they’re trying to work and work for cash or do odd jobs, I’m more worried about that. I’m more worried about the criminal element coming over there somehow, some way and taking advantage of these people,” he said.
Sposato is further demanding an ironclad guarantee: that not a single police officer will be taken away from the already-depleted Jefferson Park District to provide security at Wright.
“These need to be people from headquarters. We’re short as it is. If we’re gonna put police here, which we absolutely, positively need to, they can’t come from the 16th District. I don’t want any police from the 16th District to be assigned to this detail,” he said.
Sposato said he is encouraging his constituents to “come out” on Tuesday night and “be civil.”
“The fear of the unknown. There’s a lot of moving parts here and a lot of scary things to me, to tell you the truth. I mean — anytime you put 400 strangers together, that’s not a good mix,” the alderperson said.
“I don’t think there’ll be like any alcohol over there, but who knows? You never know. If somebody goes and gets some alcohol and they drink on the street, then they go there. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about these people other than what I feel in my heart of hearts: Minimum, 95% of these people are here to make a good life for their families.”
Guidice said Sposato’s security concerns are “the same concerns we have.”
“We know that this is a situation that is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but we’re working our way through it as best we can,” the chief of staff said.
