While “the City might be comfortable placing asylum seekers on a site where toxins are present … the State is not.”
On Tuesday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced that he is shutting down Chicago's planned $65 million camp to house illegal immigrants near Brighton Park after an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report showed toxic chemicals on the property.
According to NBC, the EPA released an 800-page report that showed the site set to house over 2,000 immigrants had mercury, arsenic, lead, cyanide, pesticides, and PCBs found on site.
In a statement, Pritzker's office said, "EPA standards on sampling and remediation are clear and known to the City. Those are not the standards the City chose to use." It continued, "The City did not engage with IEPA or the State before releasing the report and when it did release the report, was unable to explain the lesser standards they did choose to use and how they arrived at those standards."
"But while the City might be comfortable placing asylum seekers on a site where toxins are present without a full understanding of whether it is safe, the State is not. This site will not move forward as a shelter with State involvement," the statement concluded.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that the discovery of toxicity at the site was no surprise.
Residents of the area had filed a lawsuit against the city last month to halt the construction of the site claiming that it violated zoning laws.
"These people are just getting off the bus and everything's given to them," Richard Palacios, a long-time resident said. "As a taxpayer, I don't think that's right."
Another resident, Michael Patlan revealed, "Nobody was really told this was going to happen, they basically said, ‘we’re going to do this, shut up.’"
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