McHenry County preps for more possible migrants arriving at train stations

With a busload of migrants from Texas dropped off at the Fox River Grove Metra station over the weekend, McHenry County officials are helping communities plan for the potential of more arrivals, with the goal of sending them along to Chicago.

The McHenry County Emergency Management department helps municipalities coordinate the transportation of migrants to Chicago, McHenry County communications and project manager Alicia Schueller said.

For those who have concerns about migrant arrivals, “people can feel free to call their non-emergency public safety numbers to ensure that the individuals are connected with people from their municipalities so they can get them transported to Chicago safely,” Schueller said.

People looking to donate items to asylum seekers can drop off needed items to shelters listed on Chicago.gov/Support, according to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

The agency started to plan how to handle unexpected arrivals of asylum seekers as officials noticed a trend of buses dropping off dozens of migrants in nearby counties like Kankakee and Will, McHenry County Administrator Peter Austin said.

“On one hand, it was a complete surprise because we didn’t know,” Austin said. “On the other hand, I was not surprised because it’s happening everywhere.”

In recent days, buses carrying migrants have also arrived at train stations in Elburn in Kane County and Elmhurst in DuPage County.

The only location in the state where asylum seekers can go through processing is in Chicago, so there is not much the county can do other than help people get to the city, Austin said.

“We feel like it is our obligation to keep people warm, comfortable, dry and facilitate their transit to Chicago,” Austin said.

The suburban arrivals have seemingly picked up after the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance restricting when and how migrants can be dropped off there.

The Elburn drop-off prompted a response from the Kane County Republican Party, saying the migrants were “callously dumped here from the U.S. border without prior warning or care for their well-being. This is not an act of compassion but a systematic failure resulting in a criminal operation.”