Chicago City Wire

One Chicago alderman has an alternative plan to solving the city's burgeoning migrant crisis being fueled by busloads of asylum-seekers being shipped from Texas border towns to so-called "welcoming cities" such as Chicago.

"You can turn the buses back around and send them back where they came from," far South Side Alderman Anthony Beale told the Tribune.

Beale was responding to a question from a reporter about Mayor Brandon Johnson's plan to establish winterized migrant camps as alternative housing for more than 1,500 migrants currently living at police stations around the city.

Johnson said his administration has identified locations around the city suitable for people seeking asylum as a way to "recognize their dignity."

The mayor told the Sun-Times that a cost-effective way to deal with the migrant crisis is to create locations that shelter 500 to 1,000 people.

While Johnson has yet to identify locations for the migrant camps, some news outlets have reported a tent city will be located in a vacant grocery store parking lot at 115th Street and Halsted in the West Pullman neighborhood.

Some West Pullman neighbors have expressed outrage over the mayor's plan to build a temporary migrant camp in the poor far South Side neighborhood.

"Where is the humanity in that? Where is the humanity [when] thousands of African Americans sit on the streets. They said, I'll make this about people but how can you not take care of someone [then] don't care for others," Lee Dawson wrote on Nextdoor.

"We have housing in West Pullman that need to be remodeled, but instead they leave them to keep property values low, eyesores and unsafe buildings for our community. But they put up tents … for other people. So you tell me where the humanity is?