(NewsNation) — A measles outbreak inside Chicago’s largest migrant shelter has residents living in the facility on edge, anxious about potentially getting sick while in reportedly “unlivable” conditions, according to a shelter volunteer.
Health officials have reported 53 measles cases in and around Chicago, the majority in the shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. It’s home to 1,256 migrants, according to a city spokesperson.
Maria Perez, who volunteers at the shelter five days a week with the Southwest Collective, said that as cases continue to rise — not only in Chicago but around the United States — so does the level of concern among the new arrivals living at the facility.
“They’re in this predicament – they don’t know anything, what goes on here, they don’t know our resources,” Perez told NewsNation. “If they get (measles), they don’t know what long-term effect there will be on their child, or what long-term effect there would be on an adult.”
She added: “So now (migrants) are in a position where there is an outbreak, and they don’t have any control over it. These people have no control. These people are doing what they’re being told.”
Perez told NewsNation that conditions inside the shelter are also contributing to the spread of measles inside the facility. Migrants have previously characterized living conditions as inhumane, including being forced to sleep in one large area. Perez characterized the conditions at the shelter as “unlivable.”
She hears complaints about living conditions daily, including cramped quarters, a lack of ventilation, and particles falling from the shelter’s ceilings, Perez said. Yet, as the number of confirmed cases has continued to climb, migrants’ concerns have extended beyond their surroundings.
“Their concern is, once they have caught it, how they would be treated and how they would pay for the medical expense,” Perez said. “That is a concern for them — they are worried about a bill and they’re not getting the funding, they’re not getting the public assistance for the medical card. So, they’re worried about accumulating medical bills when they haven’t even started working.”
The last new measles case in Chicago was reported last Wednesday, according to the city’s Department of Public Health measles dashboard. Since the start of the measles outbreak in mid-March, nearly 600 people have been moved out of the migrant shelter in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services told NewsNation the agency did not have specific information about how many people have been moved out of the shelter for measles-related reasons.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed 95 measles cases nationwide, more than half of which are in Chicago.
Perez insists that migrants are not undergoing thorough enough health screenings when they arrive from the U.S. southern border and many of them are arriving unvaccinated for viruses like measles.
A CDC team was sent to Chicago shortly after the first cases were reported. The confirmed cases, including initial diagnoses at the shelter, were the first measles cases since 2019, city health officials said.
Although city officials — including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson — have said that the migrants did not bring the measles with them, new arrivals remain among the most vulnerable to the virus because they have not been vaccinated.
An email seeking comment from Johnson’s office was not immediately returned to NewsNation on Tuesday.
A CDC spokesman told NewsNation that teams from the federal agency are made available upon request from state and local municipalities. The assistance provided varies as does the length of time the CDC team will remain in one place.
The agency team, which arrived in Chicago in mid-March after the city’s first measles cases were announced, remains on-site as of this week, the spokesman told NewsNation. In addition to the CDC team, other groups like the Mobile Migrant Health Team (MMHT) were brought in to assist with the measles outbreak at the Pilsen shelter, an official from the group confirmed.
The MMHT participated in helping to vaccinate around 900 migrants at the shelter in two days as part of an operational belief that healthcare is a human right, the group said in a statement provided to NewsNation. The group said management from the health team was not available for interviews.
City officials said last week that 5,000 new arrivals have received the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine since the first case was reported in mid-March. Since the start of the outbreak, around 600 migrants have been moved out of the Pilsen shelter, but a city spokeswoman said she did not have the breakdown of who was moved out due to the health emergency.
Perez said that the city’s response may have come too late, claiming the city brought in the CDC to “put the public at ease.”
“The way things are going is at a slow pace – it’s not going as it should,” Perez said. “These people are not getting the services they need; they are not getting the right protocols. It doesn’t seem like the city is moving fast enough because the cases seem to be going up as the days go.”
She added: “The city is willing to jeopardize the public’s health and jeopardize us for them? That’s not fair.”
An email sent to the city health department seeking comment was not immediately returned to NewsNation on Tuesday.
Perez has echoed the concerns of Chicago Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez who represents the Pilsen neighborhood.
Sigcho-Lopez told NewsNation at the beginning of the outbreak that migrants are not being provided with the health services they need and has said that more funding needs to be provided by state and federal officials to assist new arrivals.
