For Convention Goers in Chicago, the Issue of Migrants Comes Into Full View

As tens of thousands of delegates and guests arrive for the Democratic National Convention, they will encounter a sight familiar to Chicagoans but startling to most out-of-towners: clusters of migrants from Central and South America, congregating in parks, near highway overpasses and in the Loop, where women and small children on sidewalks sell candy or plead for money with cardboard signs.

Two years after a surge of migrants began arriving at the nation’s southern border, the crisis continues to play out on Chicago’s streets. Families who fled political corruption, violence and poverty in Venezuela and other countries have become a ubiquitous presence in many of Chicago’s neighborhoods, especially in the downtown area, close to the convention’s main site, the United Center. 

The administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago has said that it will not try to compel migrants to move out of sight during the convention. That leaves one of the country’s most difficult policy issues on display in stark human terms for this week’s visitors, reminding convention guests of a potential liability — the migrant crossings during the Biden administration — going into the November presidential election.

Around downtown, migrants are not sleeping overnight on the sidewalks, they say, and some are staying in hotels that have been converted into shelters. A large number appear to be living in apartments that they obtained with government housing assistance, commuting downtown each day to sell candy and earn cash.

Very few have English skills or official work authorization, leaving them in a limbo of illegal street vending that is often ignored by police officers.

They have often been viewed with suspicion by some neighborhood residents, deepening broader tensions in Chicago — often infused with conflicts on race and class — over the question of how much city resources should be devoted to the migrants.

One City Council member this year criticized a tentative plan to relocate a migrant shelter from downtown to her ward on the South Side. Residents of Streeterville, an upscale lakefront enclave, have grumbled about migrants congregating outside the Inn of Chicago, a former boutique hotel in the neighborhood that was repurposed as a shelter.

One makeshift meeting place, Pritzker Park, was targeted by police in July after it had become a spot to sell homemade Latin American food and offer haircuts for cash. At the park, near a former private club where hundreds of migrants have been sheltered, the police said officers detained some migrants for illegal street vending and warned others not to return.

Tensions have built outside a Home Depot on the South Side, where migrants looking for temporary jobs have clashed with security guards; earlier this month, a shooting unfolded there.

The city has also been scrutinized for recently clearing a longstanding homeless encampment under a highway overpass, citing security concerns related to the convention, among other reasons. Roughly two dozen residents, who homeless advocates said were not migrants, were offered beds in shelters.

City officials said they have tried to work with compassion with both groups of people — migrants and Chicago’s more entrenched homeless population — sending them on a path not just to shelters, but to permanent housing. Brian Berg, a spokesman for the city Department of Family and Support Services, said that the clearing of encampments is part of a summer initiative that connects homeless people to housing.

Migrants selling candy downtown will not be compelled to move, a deputy mayor said in an interview, while acknowledging that visitors in the city might be startled by their presence.

“We don’t want to use this as an excuse to hide people away,” said Beatriz  Ponce de León, the deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, “and criminalize people because of their economic or immigration status.”

Chicago’s struggles with homelessness are far less significant than many major cities in the country, especially on the West Coast, where tent cities and other encampments have long been conspicuous, quality-of-life problems with no easy solutions in sight.

Yet the presence of migrants in neighborhoods throughout the city has been a challenge in Chicago, which has become one of the most popular destinations for families passing over the southern border along with cities like New York and Denver.

“It’s a totally different look for downtown,” said Annie Gomberg, a volunteer who works with migrants. “We’re not used to seeing mothers and children standing on the street selling candy and water.”

Since late 2022, more than 46,600 migrants have flooded into Chicago, the majority on buses from officials in Texas and other southern states. Less than a year ago, the migrant crisis was particularly acute, with families sleeping on the floors of airports and police stations and outside on sidewalks in tents. Since then, city and state officials — along with an army of devoted volunteers and nonprofit workers — have worked to set migrant families up with apartments and jobs, trying to settle them into life in Chicago, long a magnet for immigrants.

At the beginning of this year, close to 15,000 migrants were staying in shelters; that number is now below 6,000. President Biden’s June executive order capping the number of asylum-seekers at the U.S. border has sharply reduced the number of new arrivals, city officials said.

Some migrants who are spending their days on sidewalks downtown said that they were trying to make money while their asylum cases wind slowly through the court system.

Viviana Poma, 22, a native of Ecuador, said that six days a week, she and her 3-year-old daughter, Daime, take the subway to downtown, settling into a corner next to a bank tower near Marc Chagall’s “Four Seasons” mosaic.

On a recent afternoon, Ms. Poma held a black umbrella to shelter Daime, who watched cartoons on a cellphone, while Ms. Poma sold chocolate bars to passers-by.

Sometimes she makes $50 in a day. Sometimes nothing.

One man walking by handed her a Target gift card. “Use this to buy food,” he said. Another man handed her two paper bags with sandwiches and bags of chips inside.

“Some treat us badly,” she said of people in Chicago, “but some stop to talk.”

Bill Conway, a city councilman whose ward includes parts of downtown and the South Loop, said that a migrant shelter in the Greektown area of his district has prompted concerns from residents.

“We have had issues that involved having a lot of single males without a whole lot to do outside,” he said. “So we certainly have gotten lots of complaints involving drug use, catcalling, as well as some prostitution.”

Mr. Conway said he has been frustrated by the slow process of granting work authorizations to migrants, and he knows that companies, especially in the hospitality and manufacturing industries, are eager to hire them. Under the Biden administration, asylum-seekers may pursue work permits 150 days after filing their applications.

“The issue there is, we really need to be able to get these folks jobs,” he said of the families selling candy on street corners.

His office has hosted six clinics so far to help migrants fill out paperwork for work authorizations, and every time it hosts one, he hears from employers. “They tell us, ‘We have jobs available, please tell me when you get these folks going,’” he said.

Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the law project of the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, said that the continued influx of migrants has affected the city’s existing system for sheltering homeless people, which was already over capacity.

“It’s unprecedented to have 40,000 people out of the course of the year who are sent to Chicago with no planning or coordination” while also addressing the needs of homeless people who have been in the system for a long time, she said.

One fear of city officials has not come to pass. For months, Mr. Johnson’s administration warned that tens of thousands of migrants could suddenly arrive in Chicago just before the convention without warning, part of what they feared was an effort by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to sow chaos and embarrass Democrats.

In an interview, Ms. Ponce de León said it appeared that it was not happening.

“It doesn’t seem likely that there will be a surge, but we are still prepared and we know that we need to be prepared,” she said.