Chicago – February 14, 2024
Maria Cinfuentes stood outside Chicago’s largest migrant shelter on a windy morning last week, rubbing her cold hands together and worrying about her future.
She learned last week that her stay at the shelter, the only home she’s known since arriving in the U.S. from Venezuela in December, will come to an end next month. But she has no idea where she’ll go next.
“I don’t have a job. My husband doesn’t have a job,” the 30-year-old mother of three told NBC News in Spanish. “I don’t know anyone here. How am I going to pay rent?”
More than 13,000 migrants like Cinfuentes are under pressure to find homes and work before they are mass-evicted from city-operated shelters to conserve the budget and make room for newcomers.
But in interviews last week with more than a dozen migrants, many who spoke to NBC News expressed fear that they won’t make that deadline, especially because it is nearly impossible for the newest arrivals to get rental assistance and quick access to work permits. Advocates say it’s unlikely that everyone will be able to successfully transition out of the shelters and instead will need to reapply for access to another shelter. They fear some will end up homeless.
“I can’t even sleep. I’m staying up all night thinking,” Cinfuentes said. “It makes me sick.”
As of Thursday, more than 13,200 migrants were living in 28 shelters run by the city and state, according to a city census of new arrivals. Most of them have arrived since June 2023 as part of a busing campaign by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is seeking stricter security at the southern border. Last month, Abbott said he has sent more than 100,000 migrants to so-called sanctuary cities since April 2022, about 35,000 of them to Chicago.
Chicago, along with New York City and Denver, have struggled to keep up with the demand for housing and social services brought on by the influx. And in response, Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson put a 60-day cap on how long people can stay in city-operated migrant shelters. The first wave of evictions will come in mid-March, with 5,673 people expected to be removed from their current shelters by the end of April.
