Somebody should probably get Mayor Pete on the line. Then again, that likely wouldn’t help much. The latest travel-related crisis is currently unfolding at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. But this time it’s not an issue of delayed and canceled flights or planes nearly colliding with each other. The problem is inside the airport terminals. Huge numbers of illegal migrants mixed in with the city’s growing homeless population have moved into the airport. They have established a series of what are being described as dystopian encampments, with vagrants living there full-time. This has left both travelers and airport employees fearing for their safety and many have reported being harassed by the homeless who demand money or other items.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport has turned into a sprawling, “dystopian” encampment for the Windy City’s rising homeless population — sparking serious safety concerns among staff and passengers, who say they’ve been followed and harassed.
Shocking photos show filthy makeshift shelters set up inside the major travel hub’s terminals. One photo even shows a vagrant collapsed and asleep inside a terminal vestibule.
“It’s out of control. None of us feel safe,” Vonkisha Chatman, a custodian who works the overnight shift in Terminal 1 and 2, told CBS News.
One of the custodians who works at O’Hare told reporters that vagrants have been following some of the employees around, particularly the female workers. They harass them and demand money. They have also made an unsanitary mess out of all the bathrooms to the point where travelers are hesitant to use them.
The vagrants are there all hours of the day and night. The workers have tried calling the airport police, but they were told that the cops are helpless to do anything unless one of the migrants physically attacks someone. (The odds are good that such an attack will happen sooner rather than later.) Is this really how Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants visitors to get their first impression of Chicago when they arrive by plane?
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@chicagosmayor please clean up this city! This is the current state of O’hare airport, homeless everywhere, sleeping all over terminal 2 and getting in peoples faces yelling. This is the first impression people get when they land in this city. #CleanChicago #ORD pic.twitter.com/YUvIafUxK5
— Natasha Patel (@patel_n) February 6, 2023
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first airport to be overrun in this fashion. El Paso International Airport in Texas was similarly overwhelmed by migrants in recent months after officials ran out of places to keep them. Perhaps that’s understandable since airports tend to be quite large with plenty of space to spread out, as well as heating and air conditioning. But people are less likely to make use of the airports if they are in fear for their safety or their lives.
One possible solution to the problem could be to move the check-in windows and TSA checkpoints much closer to the entrances. People without tickets have no business being in the terminals to begin with and the airports obviously were not designed to be residential spaces. I understand that homelessness is a significant problem in most of our cities, but allowing the airports to be turned into shelters is not the solution.
And seriously, where is Pete Buttigieg while all of this is going on? The airports around the country are in worse shape than I can ever recall seeing them. Isn’t that supposed to be part of his job? Does he have a plan to address the situation? Or is he still on vacation? If he has no interest in doing the job, he shouldn’t have accepted it when Joe Biden opened the door for him.
