Abela Silva had walked thousands of miles alongside her niece Maria to escape the poverty of Venezuela. They thought they were finally safe when they arrived in Chicago.
The women, along with Maria’s husband, had been staying at the Gresham District (6th) police station for a month when they were told they might be separated by city officials who are working to move migrants into city shelters.
They’ve been hiding from city workers ever since.
“We hid from them so we could stay here, so we could be together,” Abela Silva, 52, said in Spanish, as she sat in a circle on suitcases with other migrants, looking worried.
For months, migrants who have crossed the southern border and made their way to Chicago have been camping out on the floors of police stations and in nearby parks across the city as officials have scrambled to open shelters to house them. Facing mounting pressure with the onset of winter, city officials have rapidly begun “decompression” efforts, moving thousands of overflow migrants into 27 vacant buildings around the city as shelter beds become available.
As of Thursday morning, only one police station still had migrants, with 89 staying there, while an additional 232 migrants were at O’Hare and Midway airports, according to city records, down from a peak of about 3,800 combined earlier this fall.
But volunteers and migrants report that the haste to clear police stations ahead of winter has sometimes caused anxiety and led to family separations between men and women or parents with children above the age of 19. Shelters can accommodate different configurations of singles and families depending on space and privacy.
City officials Thursday could not offer specifics on how they organize families or groups as they move them from police stations to shelters, or what they do to bring people back together who may have been separated in the process, underscoring how rapidly the plan is unfolding.
The city began in late November moving migrants out of stations, which had been holding areas for the overflow of the 25,700 migrants who have arrived in Chicago since August 2022. As of Thursday, the city has “decompressed” 21 out of 22 police stations, officials reported.
Families with young children and individuals with health issues or disabilities get priority, said Office of Emergency Management and Communications spokesperson Mary May in a statement to the Tribune.
“The City looks to reunite family members as soon as possible should they become separated as additional shelter beds are made available due to resettlement, outmigration or expanded capacity, all of which are ongoing,” she said.
On Wednesday morning, a small group of migrants waited outside the police station in Gresham for a bus to pick them up and take them to a city-run shelter. There had been 80 to 90 people staying there previously, according to an employee on-site, working under contract through Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a national employment firm that has become the city’s biggest contractor to handle the growing migrant crisis.
Maria Silva, 22, sat with her husband and aunt, looking around at the station that had become her home for the past four weeks.
She used to study communications in Venezuela before the economy plummeted and she couldn’t anymore. She said she and her family were from Indigenous communities in their home country.
“They’re going to separate us. Nos van a separar,” she said.
Migrants are being told they can no longer stay at police stations even if they want to, according to volunteers who have been helping provide food and resources to them.
Erika Villegas, volunteer at the Chicago Lawn District (8th) police station, said this policy is for their protection and safety. Families from Venezuela have never dealt with this type of cold, and often do not understand that temperatures are only going to get colder.
“We’ve explained to people that it’s not conducive for small children to continue to be outdoors,” she said.
However, volunteers said that in the process of clearing police stations of blankets, food and people, they have witnessed family members separated when sent to shelters.
Lydia Wong, a volunteer at the Ogden District (10th) police station, said she has seen couples and extended family members sent to different shelters. She has watched families be told by contracted city workers that their only option to avoid sleeping in the cold is to go to a shelter without their adult children.
“I think people along their journeys here have faced a lot of disappointments, and I think for many of them, this is one more disappointment,” Wong told the Tribune.
In the city’s rush to move migrants out, Wong said, people are sometimes put in situations where they aren’t comfortable.
“We (recently) had pregnant moms leave the shelter because they felt unsafe. And so they came back to the station to try to see if they could get into essentially a different shelter,” she said.
Migrants have repeatedly told the Tribune they receive better resources and care at police stations than at city-run shelters.
Until a few weeks ago, they were given the option to stay at police stations if they wanted to, despite bitter cold conditions at night.
Junior Martinez, 39, from Guárico, Venezuela, said he had been at the police station in Gresham for three months and wanted to stay. He had heard concerning things about city shelters.
“It’s so strict there. At least there’s more space here,” he said, looking around the police station.
He wore a large puffy donated jacket, with goggles around his forehead.
Yordanis Morillo, 37, sat outside the Gresham police station with her 4-year-old daughter, Isabella. They came from the city-run shelter where they were staying on the Lower West Side, looking for food.
Isabella found a McDonald’s gift card in her mother’s pocket and waved it around with excitement.
“If you lose the card, we won’t eat,” Morillo said, teasing her.
She played with her mother’s hair.
A school bus showed up and migrants got in line.
Favorite Staffing decompression project manager Andres Zayas stood next to Morillo and her daughter. He added migrants’ names to the clipboard of registrants for city shelters.
“They’re visiting. The lady over there is visiting,” he said about the pair who had come from the shelter.
Several women who got in line said their husbands were working. They were uncertain how their husbands would know where to go.
“They’re coming out of the woodwork. They’re stragglers. See how confusing it gets?” Zayas said.
Justin Graham, emergency coordinator for the city’s Emergency Operations Center, stood next to him. Graham did not deny that some familial separations are occurring.
“Age comes into play. Certain ages. It really varies from case to case,” he said.
Graham made phone calls to other city officials, watching as migrants gathered their belongings. A truck from the Greater Chicago Food Depository had dropped off steaming aluminum trays of rice and chicken just 20 minutes earlier. Much of the food sat uneaten.
“We’re moving people every day. We’re reuniting people with family members they may have gotten separated from every day. Either down south or up here,” he said. “We’re trying. We’re trying to keep our head above water.”
Maria Silva put a trash bag of her belongings into the back of the bus, then climbed the steps onto it.
“Get out of here, go! Pedal to the metal!” Zayas said to the bus driver, when everyone had gotten on.
The school bus drove away and the station was empty, except for the trays of food and leftover donated clothes and suitcases on the sidewalk outside. Zayas looked at Graham.
“What are we doing? Lunch?” he asked.