Chicago Warms New Migrants in Idling Buses as the Weather Turns Nasty

Chicago could see its coldest temperatures since 2019 over the next few days, city officials said on Friday. Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city was ready to keep both residents and newly arrived migrants safe during the unusually brutal winter conditions.

A limit of 60 days on stays in city shelters would be set aside temporarily because of the snow and the predicted single-digit temperatures that would follow, the mayor said.

“We’re not evicting new arrivals out in the cold this winter,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference. “Our mission is to continue to live up to our values as we welcome new arrivals.” More than 14,500 migrants are in city shelters.

The mayor criticized Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for continuing to send asylum seekers to Chicago in such conditions. Roughly 140 migrants were awaiting shelter on Friday at the city’s downtown “landing zone,” where busloads of migrants arrive daily from Texas.

Ten city buses were parked at the landing zone on Friday with their heaters running, to shelter arriving migrants temporarily, and the city was prepared to place additional buses there as needed, Mr. Johnson said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois echoed Mr. Johnson’s criticisms in a letter to Mr. Abbott on Friday, pleading with him to stop sending migrants to Chicago in winter.

“You are now sending asylum seekers from Texas to the Upper Midwest in the middle of winter — many without coats, without shoes to protect them from the snow — to a city whose shelters are already overfilled with migrants you sent here,” Mr. Pritzker wrote. “Your callousness, sending buses and planes full of migrants in this weather, is now life-threatening to every one of the arrivals.”

Maggie O’Keefe, a spokeswoman for Chi-Care, an organization that provides aid to homeless people, said the group would serve lunch and dinner to the new arrivals. The group will also visit homeless people who are staying outside in parks and under viaducts, she said.

“Typically, when there is a snowstorm or bad weather, we’ll see less people living in tent encampments,” said Ms. O’Keefe. “The weather does impact whether or not they’re going to be living on the streets.”

Jose Tirado, executive director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, urged Chicago residents to be careful as temperatures fall and winds strengthen in the next several days. He said that anyone in the city who needed shelter or a place to get warm could call 311 and be connected with services and information.