With severe winter weather hitting the region, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration delayed a plan to force migrants to leave city shelters after they have stayed for 60 days as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pleaded with Texas’s governor to stop sending migrants amid the life-threatening cold.

Chicago’s postponement Friday comes just days before the first migrants were scheduled to be removed from city shelters Tuesday under the policy that had been put in place in November. The pending deadline will be paused for the next week, and migrants will be able to remain in shelter until at least Jan. 22, Department and Family Support Services Commissioner Brandie Knazze said.

“So to be clear, we’re not evicting new arrivals out in the cold this winter,” Johnson said Friday during a press conference. “Our mission is to continue to live up to our values as we welcome new arrivals. We’ll continue to meet this challenge.”

But more than 100 migrants are expected to continue sleeping on CTA warming buses while they wait for a spot in 28 maxed-out city shelters where 14,574 people are already staying, according to the city’s most recent data. Altogether 408 migrants were still in need of shelter, according to the city, with several hundred staying at O’Hare and Midway airports.

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The decision was announced as Chicago was hit with a snowstorm expected to drop as much as a foot of snow in some parts of the region and ahead of forecasts that showed the city faces sub-zero temperatures and wind chills in the coming days.

The first 60-day notices were issued Nov. 17 in a major policy shift putting limits on the city’s aid as the Johnson administration grappled with more than 34,500 migrants bused and flown to Chicago from states like Texas. People would have to leave shelters in waves depending on the date they arrived.

The limits also coincided with a state-administered rental assistance program being halved to just three months for migrants. Anyone entering the shelter system since November is no longer eligible to receive the rental aid.

Roughly 650 asylum seekers are slated to leave shelters on Jan. 22 as of now, though the city is still working to connect them to housing, Knazze said, and 17 are “in some phase of the process” of securing housing with the help of rental assistance.

Overall, about 7,842 migrants have received 60-day notices, and close to 1,200 are “connected” to rental aid, Knazze said.

Before the 60-day limit was announced, thousands of migrants have stayed in city shelters longer than that benchmark. A WBEZ analysis of city data found roughly 7 in 10 migrants have been at shelters longer than 60 days, with the average stay 76 days for those who left by Nov. 1. Volunteers, service providers and some alderpersons have feared the looming deadline will displace families and leave them with no place to stay during the cold winter months.

“They’re scared. They don’t know what’s going to happen,” Veronica Saldaña, a volunteer who has been aiding migrants said Thursday. “And nobody does know. So we don’t have any answers for them. So they’re really worried. Are they going to be put on the street?”

The city had previously said exceptions would be made in the event of extreme cold weather or if migrants had an impending move-in date with a signed lease. But those who had not found housing by the time their 60 days were up would have to leave shelter and return to the city’s recently-established “landing zone,” where they could put in a request for another shelter spot.

The landing zone was established as a new point of intake to relieve police station lobbies from being used to house migrants and to discourage buses from Texas from dropping off migrants at random locations. The Near West Side lot is where buses are directed to arrive and where migrants are now temporarily sleeping on 10 CTA warming buses, with more prepared to arrive, as they wait for a spot in city shelters that are at capacity.

But volunteers who have been assisting migrants have decried conditions at the landing zone. Migrants have described sleeping on the buses for days on end without basic necessities like blankets or showers. There were 141 people staying at the landing zone as of Friday morning, with 266 staying at O’Hare and Midway airports. One person was staying at a police station, according to city figures.

“It’s completely inadequate,” Saldaña said. “They put them on these buses without any type of plan.”

Saldaña said volunteers have had to advocate for services like showers to be provided by the city, and that medical attention has also been slow. She even brought one man to urgent care after he was told it would be several days until he would receive care at the landing zone.

“They looked at his leg and sent us straight to the emergency room,” Saldaña said. “And turns out he had two fractures in the leg.”

Johnson said the city has not yet discussed whether it will return to plans to stand up large tent-like structures at base camps to house hundreds of migrants. Previous plans to construct the winterized tents were scuttled amid tensions with the state and environmental issues at the land for the sites. Johnson said he spoke with White House officials last night about the need for more federal resources, and he will be meeting with suburban mayors next week.

Asked if the conditions at the landing zone are acceptable, Johnson said it was temporary and directed blame to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who he said is putting Chicago in an unfair position.

“Police stations on floors, or buses – that chaos is being caused by the governor of Texas,” Johnson said. “He has put the entire country in that situation. Look, there are no easy decisions in all of this.”

On Friday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker urged Abbott to reverse course because of the extreme weather and stop sending migrants.

“I am writing to you today hoping to appeal to your humanity,” Pritzker wrote in a letter. “Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives, suspend your transports and do not send more people to our state. We are asking you to help prevent additional deaths.”

Johnson spokesman Ronnie Reese said Thursday “the purpose of the landing zone was never housing and amenities, but outmigration and transport to temporary shelter.”

As the number of people at the landing zone has risen, Reese said the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications has worked with the Chicago Park District to bring migrants to a park field house where they can take showers. Reese also said Chi-Care, a nonprofit that aids the unhoused, has provided over 4,000 meals in the last two weeks to the landing zone.

Saldaña said she worries if conditions at the landing zone continue, people will resort to going back to police stations where volunteers had established networks to help support migrants with food, medical attention, legal assistance and more.

“I can very easily see them going to (the) landing zone, not getting their basic needs met there and then finding their way to their police station where they were being taken care of,” Saldaña said, “and then all of these police stations being full again.”

Tessa Weinberg and Mariah Woelfel cover Chicago government and politics for WBEZ.