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'I don't want them there!' Hyde Park residents heated over migrants moving to Lake Shore Hotel
There was a heated response Wednesday night from a South Side community where hundreds of migrants are about to be moved.
CHICAGO - There was a heated response Wednesday night from a South Side community where hundreds of migrants are about to be moved.
At least four buses of migrants have arrived in Chicago this week and this isn't the first time that migrants have lived in Hyde Park.
About 120 migrants lived at the Lake Shore Hotel earlier this year in January and March.
And overall, the community isn't happy about it.
A community meeting was held at The Promontory on Wednesday to discuss the new temporary housing, and there were lots of fireworks.
Migrants are expected to move into the hotel for six months, where 300 asylum seekers can be housed. However, the city says it is a fluid situation, and it will need to revisit the timeline.
"I don't want them there! Take them someplace else or send them back to Venezuela I don't care where they go," said resident Doris Lewis. "This is wrong. You got 73 percent of the people that are homeless in the city are Black people, what have you done for them?"
The alderman Desmon Yancy of the 5th Ward says he just found out about the move last week.
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"I found out on Wednesday [and] called the meeting immediately. I don't know what happened before I got here," said Yancy. "But in the spirit of transparency, this is why we're in a room, because I felt that it was important for community members to know what was going on in their neighborhood even if the mayor's office wasn't willing to."
Residents had a lot of questions about police patrols and the future plans for dealing with the migrant crisis.
"Plymouth Court and Van Buren: that site looks like, basically a bomb went off, so I'm concerned about the sites where the migrants are," one resident said.
New arrivals must wait 150 days to apply for a work permit and those on the front line of dealing with the crisis say part of the solution is getting migrants seeking asylum work.
‘Without some remedies in the federal action, whether it's funding or the ability for folks to work, we find ourselves in a hole," said policy fellow with the mayor’s office Jesus el Torro.
Currently, 1,900 migrants are awaiting placement with hundreds living at O'Hare and a few at Midway.
Despite the overwhelming response from residents, migrants will still move in, starting as early as Friday.