The journey to Wadsworth, a formerly bustling elementary school located in Chicago’s South Side, was but a single episode in a trek spanning more than 4,000 miles. This perilous journey, undertaken by those on the bus, traced one of the world’s most treacherous migration paths leading to the United States. These travelers found themselves in the Windy City, due to a busing program initiated by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Many of these new arrivals would find employment, sending earnings back home to their families suffering under severe hyperinflation.
Some newcomers would secure a place to live within Chicago, while others ventured further into suburban territory or even another city entirely. To the local residents of Wadsworth, the sight of the bright yellow school bus was laced with bitter irony, a stark reminder of its past life as a beloved school. A decade ago, the then-mayor Rahm Emanuel initiated a wave of public school closures, including Wadsworth. The building that once hummed with laughter and learning had since been shuttered and left desolate.
Since August of 2022, the busing strategy of Governor Abbott has relocated a massive number of around 44,000 migrants to Chicago. The city’s governing body has, over the past two years, encountered resistance from certain residents in response to attempts to establish new emergency shelters within their districts. The dissatisfaction of South Side residents towards the migrant shelter squarely challenges this narrative, forcing Chicagoans to grapple with the tough questions underlying life in a racially segregated and inequitable sanctuary city.
Post Wadsworth’s merger with Dumas, The University of Chicago charter school chose to vacate the Wadsworth building in favor of a new facility. In 2017, it stood vacant, prompting residents from adjacent regions to brainstorm ways to breathe new life into the building. A popular suggestion advocated for its transformation into a Community Center for Performing Arts.
Despite notable efforts to collaborate with the Little Village Community Council, the city’s mayoral administration pressed ahead with their plan. The chosen location was Woodlawn, which consequently would be the next host for the shelter. She detailed happening over the span of nine months that left an already precariously positioned community in an even worse state by hosting most men with no constructive engagements. She explained how these actions inadvertently recreated social conditions many neighbors believed fostered disillusionment, infighting, drug use, and crime.
Julie, who had called Woodlawn home for the past twenty-two years, echoed the frustration of her neighbors. However, Julie had no intentions to advocate for the city to revoke its sanctuary city status. Nor did other residents Nora, Nicole or Sylvie. Rather, they wished for more transparency, an honest acknowledgment by the city authorities they had rejected neighborhood input when making decisions about the shelter’s setup and placement.
Thereafter, the dispute over the control of the Wadsworth building became mired in the politics surrounding Chicago’s sanctuary approaches. Protests by Woodlawn residents were misconceived instead as objections against the incoming of Latinx migrants rather than a call for a balanced allocation of neighborhood resources that might appropriately accommodate migrants in the long-term.
Residing in a sanctuary city calls for confronting uncomfortable questions such as why a school becomes empty, let alone serve as an initial consideration for settlement by city officials when preparing to receive new inhabitants. Recently, the mayoral administration of Chicago signaled a shift toward the One Shelter Initiative. This plan suggests a consolidation of the homeless and migrant refuge systems into a singular, unified structure.
Concurrently, the upcoming American presidential administration is likely to continue pinning the blame on newly arrived immigrants for stirring feelings of discontent within communities. The goal seems to be for civilians to lay blame on each other rather than seeking accountability and demanding investments from the governing institutions.
Half a year following my conversation with Julie, the city declared plans to dilute the population density within the Wadsworth shelter. During the initial week of May, inhabitants of Wadsworth were provided with lists of bed numbers nightly. Those whose numbers were called were to move to an allocated shelter the following day.
Over the subsequent four months, he was intermittently shuffled between two other single shelters. Following not much long after Hector’s relocation, the school grounds of Wadsworth once again became desolate.