How Chicago residents feel about the city's response to a migrant surge

Chicago, the city hosting the Democratic National Convention next week, has been at the center of the national conversation around U.S. immigration policy. Laura Barrón-López reports.

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Geoff Bennett: Chicago, the city hosting the Democratic National Convention next week, has been at the center of the national conversation U.S. immigration policy.

Laura Barron-Lopez is there and has this report.

Rev. Kenneth Phelps, Pastor, Concord Missionary Baptist Church: All of us, to be human is to face adversity in our lives.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Concord Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side has transformed in the last two years.

Rev. Kenneth Phelps: Give God’s praise.

Laura Barron-Lopez: The historically Black church now offers live translation during its services to accommodate a growing number of Spanish-speaking congregants who fled their homes for the United States.

Kenneth Phelps is the church’s pastor.

Rev. Kenneth Phelps: They’re here. They’re hungry and they’re hurting and they’re in our community. And from a Christian standpoint, we have always welcomed the visitors and strangers.

Laura Barron-Lopez: People like Belixis Lugo, who are strangers no more. She now lives in a studio apartment with her two daughters after spending six months in a city-run shelter when they arrived from Venezuela.

Belixis Lugo, Migrant (through interpreter): It’s good to feel that you have peace. And Pastor Phelps has helped me a lot with that. Any problem that we have or anything we need, he always tells us to let him know and that he will take care of us. I feel at home.

Laura Barron-Lopez: But the integration of these new members has not been easy.

Rev. Kenneth Phelps: Many of the community weren’t welcoming.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Phelps says community outrage erupted early last year when the city opened a shelter for migrants at a defunct elementary school around the corner from the church. The community had been told that it would be a job training center.

Rev. Kenneth Phelps: We were told that the city didn’t have resources to do that. And then, somehow, seriously, magically, you find moneys to open up a shelter. It just didn’t set right with the community.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Over the last two years, Chicago has spent nearly half-a-billion dollars on 18 migrants. It’s one of several Democratic-led cities targeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has bused more than 100,000 migrants in a politically motivated move to shift the nation’s attention to immigration.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX): I took the border to them and those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.

(Cheering)

(Applause)

Laura Barron-Lopez: At its peak in January, Chicago housed 15,000 migrants. Today, the number is roughly 5,000, a drop that has coincided with a massive decline in the number of people apprehended crossing the southern border, due in part to a Biden administration action currently blocking asylum seekers.

Beatriz Ponce de Leon, Chicago Deputy Mayor for Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights: So there are no people to put on buses to Chicago in mass numbers that we’re aware of.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Beatriz Ponce de Leon, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, says the city is looking for more action from Washington.

Beatriz Ponce de Leon: This is a federal responsibility. What we have done here is build a asylum seeker resettlement program. It has been tense at times, but we have managed to do it without taking away from any programs or any other communities.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Like his 2020 and 2016 campaigns, Trump has increasingly demonized migrants.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they have done. They have poisoned. Mental institutions and prisons all over the world.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Earlier this week repeating his 2020 message that migrants were destroying American suburbs, Trump’s campaign posted a meme on social media saying: “Import the Third World, become the Third World.”

But he’s also using the influx of migrants in blue cities over the last two years to win over some Black voters at the margins.

Donald Trump: I will tell you that coming — coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs.

Jaime Dominguez, Northwestern University: Again, perception is reality when it comes to politics.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Jaime Dominguez is a professor at Northwestern University. He says the large numbers of migrants sent to Chicago and other cities ignited a broader discussion among Democrats.

Jaime Dominguez: It did at least force the Democratic Party to begin to have a conversation, right, about, going forward, what kind of platform they were going to put forward when it came to immigration.

Narrator: As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels.

Laura Barron-Lopez: In recent weeks, the Harris campaign began running ads in Arizona and Nevada that lean into her background as attorney general of California and includes a pledge to hire thousands more Border Patrol agents.

In rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris has attacked Republicans for killing a border security bill, one of the most conservative to be considered by Congress in decades.

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: Earlier this year, we had a chance to pass the toughest bipartisan border security bill in decades. But Donald Trump tanked the deal.

(Booing)

Kamala Harris: Despite polls showing Harris ahead or gaining momentum in nearly all battleground states, a recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found registered voters favor Trump on handling immigration, 53 percent compared to 47 percent for Harris.

The former president has made the deportation of undocumented immigrants a central tenet of his campaign’s immigration proposals.

Donald Trump: We are going to start the largest mass deportation in the history of our country because we have no choice.

Laura Barron-Lopez: That worries 24-year-old Estefania Riera, who arrived in Chicago four months ago with her partner and her two children.

Estefania Riera, Migrant (through interpreter): We feel very hurt. We understand the damage they will do to us. There may be some people who come to do harm, but we are not all the same. In Venezuela, my 13-year-old brother was killed, so I fled to the United States.

We just want to work, to look for a better life here for our children and for ourselves.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Riera is a client at Onward House on the city’s northwest side, a nonprofit supporting asylum seekers in Chicago. Despite fewer people arriving in recent months, caseworker Jonny Barrera says the organization is still scrambling to provide services.

Jonny Barrera, Onward Neighborhood House: We actually have more than 1,000 on the waiting list, so it’s a very high need.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Barrera says many clients here are aware that their ability to make a life in the U.S. may be upended if former President Trump wins in November.

Jonny Barrera: They’re very well informed on what’s going on, and so having to come into this country during the elections and now having to run the risk of being deported, the clients are very afraid.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Here in Chicago, the promised influx of migrants from Texas to coincide with the Democratic National Convention hasn’t materialized, and, today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that encounters were down 32 percent from June to July, the lowest monthly total since September of 2020.

And that’s the first full month of data since President Biden signed an executive action restricting asylum seekers — Geoff.

Geoff Bennett: Laura Barron-Lopez, thank you.