As Texas continues to send thousands of undocumented immigrants to the Chicago area, at least four suburbs are moving to pass policies that would restrict buses seeking to drop them off, NBC News reports. The proposed policies would require bus operators to seek approval before they unload people. Chicago, which has been struggling to house the busloads of people who have arrived over the last year, had established protocols for drop-offs that resulted in some bus companies’ leaving migrants in suburbs outside the city. “Mayors are looking at this for the same reason the city of Chicago did, which is that the chaotic nature of having buses just coming in and dropping people off at a train station or some other place within the city is not a good solution,” said Michael Turner, the mayor of Woodstock, where a bus dropped off about 35 migrants headed for Chicago at a train station over the weekend.
As of Tuesday morning, 14,706 residents were in 27 active city-run shelters in Chicago, with 244 more waiting for placement in O’Hare International Airport, 56 at the city's landing zone and eight at police districts, according to a city census of new arrivals. According to the city, more than 29,000 asylum-seekers and migrants have arrived since August 2022, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s migrant busing program reached Chicago.