This week marks one year since the first bus of asylum seekers was sent to Chicago from the southern border. More than 13,500 migrants have arrived in the city to date.

From the moment the first bus of migrants arrived in Chicago a year ago, much of the ongoing work of supporting migrants has been done by volunteers, mutual aid groups and community organizers who swung into action.

This week marks one year since the first bus of asylum seekers arrived in Chicago from the southern border. Since then, WTTW News has covered the city’s and volunteers’ response to aid the thousands of migrants seeking shelter.

More than 2,000 men, women and children are being forced to sleep on the floors of police stations across the city and at O’Hare Airport, according to city data released by the mayor’s office Wednesday.

The number of migrants living at police stations and O’Hare rose 28% between Aug. 18 and Friday. All are waiting for space to open up in one of 15 city shelters, which housed more than 6,500 migrants as of Friday, according to city data.

A 3-year-old migrant girl who was on a Texas-sponsored bus to Chicago died last week, prompting investigations by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies, authorities said.

Jismary Alejandra Barboza González, who would have turned 4 next week, died Aug. 10 while on a chartered bus, part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s program begun last year of sending migrants crossing into the state to Democratic-led cities across the country.

Texas has bused more than 30,000 migrants to Democratic-controlled cities across the U.S. since last year as part of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s sprawling mission on the border.

A new state law will soon allow non-citizens who are both legally eligible to work in the U.S. and authorized to possess firearms under federal law to become police officers and deputy sheriffs.

Hundreds of migrant men, women and children continue to sleep on police station floors, despite efforts to move them into shelters.

“No one was moved as a result of Lollapalooza,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday. “We are transitioning people into shelters. As a city, do we want people living in police stations? Is that acceptable? It’s not.”

PBS NewsHour producer Zeba Warsi has been investigating sexual assault claims in ICE facilities since 2021. She teamed up with Latino USA and Futuro Investigates to tell the stories of three migrant women.

About 50 people gathered Thursday to protest the city’s process for deciding to use a Chicago Park District facility in Edgewater to shelter asylum seekers. The city has been under a state of emergency for months as it seeks to house the 11,500 migrants who’ve been bused or flown in from Texas.

Nearly 12,000 people, most of them from Central and South America, have arrived in Chicago in the past 11 months, stretching the city’s safety net beyond its breaking point.

The controversy centers on the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors programs, which provide health care benefits to low-income noncitizens who would qualify for Medicaid benefits if not for their citizenship status.

The probe by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability remains ongoing. Hours after the sexual misconduct allegations became public, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration moved all of the migrants out of the Ogden (10th) Police District headquarters, which patrols Lawndale and Little Village, where the officers under investigation are assigned to work.