Committee on Immigration and Refugee Rights sends migrant reporting ordinance to City Council for vote

Jewell Hillery
·2 min read
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CHICAGO — The City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) is one step closer to sharing more specific information about migrants with City Council members.

When the Committee on Immigration and Refugee Rights (CIRR) under DFSS met Thursday, they passed an ordinance that would require regular reporting on migrants staying in and leaving the city’s emergency shelters based on the city’s 60-day stay policy.

Committee chairman and 40th Ward Alderman Andre Vasquez Jr. said CIRR voted for the DFSS to share weekly updates with the City Council on the number of people leaving emergency temporary shelters. The proposed ordinance would also require the department to report more specific data like gender, age, country of origin and original move-in date.

“One report on what happened in the past week, I think you can start to see trends that way,” said Jonathan Ernst, First Deputy Commissioner for DFSS. “That’s my personal opinion.”

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Vasquez Jr. said every two weeks, DFSS would also provide information that includes complaints from migrants and who ends up back in shelters after leaving because of the city’s 60-day stay rule.

“I think when we talk about a population where 50% can’t get rental assistance and 90% can’t get work authorization, I’ve got concerns about the city evicting anyone from shelters in that circumstance,” Vasquez Jr. said. “Because, more likely than not, they’ll end up on the street near the shelters, in tents on the street in viaducts homeless.

“We could be creating a larger problem by this policy, and so, having the tracking could show us what that looks like, and who is actually returning to shelter, and who is not.”

The ordinance passed by the Committee on Immigration and Refugee Rights is expected to go before the City Council for a full vote during their next general session on April 17.

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