In different times, the tiny brick Metra station in the town of Wilmette in suburban Chicago was just a place where commuters grabbed lattes and waited on black metal benches before boarding trains to the city.
These days, it has also become a welcome center of sorts for migrants.
Large cardboard boxes full of coats, hats and gloves are tidily arranged along one wall. Volunteers are working there daily, accepting donations of socks, puffy North Face jackets, snow pants and bars of soap. When busloads of migrants are dropped off in Wilmette — where their chaperones help them catch trains to downtown Chicago to be transferred to a shelter — they are first met by volunteers at the Wilmette station and given a few essentials.
The migrant crisis in Chicago is intensifying well beyond the city limits. For more than a month, city officials said, buses from Texas have avoided Chicago entirely, dropping hundreds of migrants in suburbs that have been given no warning that they are en route. In December, Chicago enacted penalties for bus operators who drop off passengers outside of designated times and locations or without a permit. The dynamic has played out elsewhere as well, sending some migrants to New Jersey suburbs of New York City.
As the suburban drop-offs near Chicago have grown in number, residents who are concerned about the well-being of the migrants have raised funds and collected supplies. Many municipalities have quickly passed rules limiting buses similar to the restrictions set in Chicago, hoping to stay out of the fray. And some suburban residents are approaching their elected officials with growing alarm, making their feelings clear: We don’t want any part of the migrant crisis.
In Wilmette, a town of 27,000 people where the median household income is about $183,000, dozens of residents have mobilized to help the migrants with clothing and other needs before they board trains for the so-called landing zone in downtown Chicago, where they are then routed to shelters around the city.
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