A five-year-old boy has died inside an overcrowded Chicago shelter alongside 2,300 migrants after staff allegedly refused to call an ambulance.
Jean Carlos Martinez, 5, was pronounced dead on arrival in hospital on Sunday after days of being sick at the Pilsen shelter south of downtown Chicago.
Four other children and a teenager were later taken to hospital from the same shelter, suffering from fevers and other ailments.
Chicago is struggling to care for 26,000 immigrants sent from Texas and other border states on buses after crossing the border over the past year.
Jean Carlos Martinez, 5, was pronounced dead on arrival in hospital on Sunday after days of being sick at the Pilsen shelter south of downtown Chicago
The city has spent $138 million and counting on the crisis that is only expected to get worse as temperatures drop as winter goes on.
Jean was sick with a fever and a pain in his left leg for two or three days before he died and began vomiting on Sunday morning.
His lips turned blue and his family claimed to police that staff said it was ‘probably because of the cold’ and refused to call an ambulance.
While his father was pleading for an ambulance, Jean had a seizure and shelter staff gave him CPR, according to a police report seen by the Chicago Tribune.
He was rushed to Comer Children’s Hospital about 3pm and pronounced dead at 3.47pm. His family were not allowed to ride with him and were instead patted down and driven in a police car.
Jean was bleeding from his mouth and nose with a 100F fever and suffered from diarrhea for days before his death.
The Pilsen shelter has been the subject of numerous complaints about poor sanitation and overcrowding risking the lives of immigrants inside.
Videos from inside showed coughing and crying children, some so cold they were wearing snow jackets, and water leaking from the ceiling onto the cots below.
The shelter is run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing, a Kansas-based contractor, that the city paid $100 million to operate migrant shelters since September 2022.
Jean’s death is being investigated and an autopsy by Cook County medical examiner on Monday was inconclusive, pending further investigation.
Video shot by a passerby showed rubbish piled up outside the shelter. The converted factory was the subject of numerous complaints about unsanitary conditions
The Chicago Fire Department said a three-year-old boy was taken to hospital vomiting, a seven year-old girl with an ear infection, and one-year-old, a four-year-old, and 18-year-old with other medical complaints.
A 47-year-old woman was also taken to a hospital with chest pain on Tuesday morning.
Chicago and other northern American cities have struggled to find housing for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers, many of whom have been bused from Texas throughout the past year.
Earlier this month, hundreds of asylum-seekers still awaited placement at airports and police stations in Chicago, some of them still camped on sidewalks outside precinct buildings.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said the blame for Jean’s death lay squarely with southern governors for busing in thousands of immigrants to the ‘sanctuary city’.
‘They’re just dropping off people anywhere. Do you understand how raggedy and how evil that is… and then you want to hold us accountable for something that’s happening down at the border? It’s sickening?’ he said.
Mayor Johnson insisted the asylum-seekers arrived in Chicago unwell due to the conditions they were held in at the border before being loaded on to buses.
‘Do you hear me? They’re showing up sick. The issue is not just how we respond in the city of Chicago, it’s the fact that we have a governor — a governor, an elected official in the state of Texas — that is placing families on buses without shoes, cold, wet, tired, hungry, afraid, traumatized,’ he said.
‘And then they come to the city of Chicago where we have homelessness, we have mental health clinics that have been shut down and closed.
‘The governor of Texas needs to take a look in the mirror [and see] the chaos that he is causing for this country.
‘This is not just a Chicago dynamic, he is attacking our country.’
Videos from inside the Pilsen shelter (pictured) showed coughing and crying children, some so cold they were wearing snow jackets, and water leaking from the ceiling onto the cots below
O’Hare International Airport accommodated hundreds of migrants in a screened off area as the crisis gathered steam this summer
The mayor’s office said the city had resettled or reunited more than 10,000 migrants and was sheltering 13,992 at 27 temporary shelters, and doubled down on blaming southern governors.
‘Many new arrivals survive brutal and dangerous journeys to border states and are promptly and inhumanely shipped out with little to no triage,’ it said.
‘In border states, new arrivals are spending the night outdoors without a shower, running water, or food.
‘Border states do not take appropriate measures to ensure the safety of individuals they load onto buses.
‘This carelessness directly contributed to the death of a three-year-old girl in September of this year and may continue to have devastating effects.’
The mayor’s office said an investigation was ongoing and any changes to safety protocols for staff would be made based on the findings.
The city said it was ticketing and impounding buses trying to drop off migrants outside designated zones.
‘As temperatures continue to fall, the city is enacting stricter penalties to discourage bus companies from flouting these protocols,’ it said.
‘The inhumane treatment further endangers the safety and security of asylum seekers, and adds additional strain to City departments, volunteers and mutual aid partners tasked with easing what is already a harsh transition.’
Mayor Brandon Johnson said the blame for Jean’s death lay squarely with southern governors for busing in thousands of immigrants
Although the city reports that police stations have been mostly cleared, massive shelters are not necessarily a safe alternative, said Annie Gomberg, a volunteer with the city’s Police Station Response Team who has been working with Chicago’s new arrivals since April.
Gomberg said people staying at the Pilsen shelter told her mold was visible inside, and lack of insulation made the repurposed warehouse very cold.
Last week, Mayor Johnson ordered city lawmakers to quash a bid to put the controversial ‘Welcoming City Ordinance’ to a referendum on Chicago’s March primary ballot.
Sanctuary city status means that city officials are forbidden from asking questions about a person’s immigration status, or revealing it to federal authorities.
Police in the city are not allowed to arrest anyone solely because they are an illegal immigrant, and the city will not co-operate with an investigation by immigration authorities unless ordered to by a court.
More than 560 cities, states and counties across the US have declared themselves sanctuaries, and Chicago adopted the status in 1985.
But sanctuary cities have been a favorite target of governors on the southern border who have bussed thousands of migrants north to them as the migration crisis has gathered steam.
Residents protested in Brighton Park against the proposed migrant camp to accommodate the influx of migrants
Johnson was among five Democratic city mayors who headed to DC last month to beg the Biden administration for a staggering $5 billion in federal funds to deal with the issue.
‘Our cities need additional resources that far exceed the amount proposed in order to properly care for the asylum seekers entering our communities,’ they wrote.
‘Relying on municipal budgets is not sustainable and has forced us to cut essential city services.’
Johnson accused his opponents of ‘meanness’ and claimed a public vote on sanctuary status would do nothing to address the strain from migrants.
‘This is a crisis, and as I’ve said, it’s not going to go away because people are upset,’ he told reporters on Wednesday.
‘Now unfortunately, you have individuals that have used this as a way to execute its meanness.
‘That type of meanness has caused the type of strife that we’re experiencing now.’