CHICAGO -- Questions remain after dozens of migrants in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood were forced out into the cold just one day before Christmas Eve.
City personnel converged on a large South Shore apartment building located at 74th and South Phillips on Monday, Dec. 23, with a heavy presence of Chicago Police officers. According to spokespeople for the office of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the migrants were evacuated due to unsafe conditions.
Community members who spoke with WGN News complained that the operation was both chaotic and heavy-handed.
"I saw groups of children, ladies with newborns in their arms," said one person who did not wish to be identified. "With children? They can't even get their coats out of their apartment?"
Warming buses and the Salvation Army were among various city agencies on hand to support the removal, but migrants say they weren't given adequate notice.
"I have two small children," a migrant father told WGN News. "One is two years old and the other is three. And I don't have anywhere to go."
Other migrants say they were upset with the confusion and abruptness of the situation, most especially because of the inability to retrieve crucially important documents.
"The majority of us have lost our documents, our clothes and our shoes," a mother of two said.
Many who spoke with WGN News said they are confused about where they'll go and what happens to the rent money already paid for at the large apartment building in the 7300 hundred block of S. Phillip.
"We have paid a month (of rent) for $1,200 and it's only been 10 days," one migrant man told WGN News.
Spokespeople for the Salvation Army say there have been serious issues with residents in the building over the past month, adding that too many occupants moved into the building, causing deplorable conditions.
Sources say the city's Building Department made the call to evacuate the apartment structure.
WGN News has learned that six families were transported to the New Life Shelter, while others were taken to the city's new intake center.