Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is overwhelmed as they try to house a recent influx of migrants that have been bused to the city. The pace of buses has been ramping up, with 10 buses expected to arrive each day.

So just how is the city responding to the more than 17,000 migrants that have arrived in the past year and the growing need for housing ahead of winter? WBEZ’s Clare Lane spoke with the mayor’s First Deputy Chief of Staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas about the issue Tuesday.

The following is an edited transcript.

So Chicago has received over 330 buses. This is since August of last year, and that pace of buses transporting migrants is not slowing down. How many more people can the city accept and care for? Is the situation tenable?

We are working really quickly on a 24 hour cycle to identify vacant land for base camps as well as buildings that could be retrofitted for congregate shelter. So we are constantly scouting, we are speaking with alders we are speaking with a brokerage firm to identify these locations, ensure that they meet the minimum kind of qualifications of minimally 200 beds as well as very little kind of effort to be able to retrofit and then of course, the shelter and toilet setup or the ability to set up a trailer.

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Is there a point that you anticipate the city will have to turn buses away if some of these locations can’t be scouted or meet that standard?

We are a welcoming city, and in fact, we’re a welcoming state. So that’s particularly why we’re working closely with the state government as well as our county partners to identify if there are other locations. You may have heard that the state just announced the awards for the various other municipalities, along with Chicago, for the $42.5 million. So we’ll be in conversation with those partners to see if they are ready to live up to the letter of our welcoming state legislation.

So that was a question I had…is the state and surrounding cities, to an extent, doing enough to help Chicago?

Well, I could say that everybody could do more. When it comes down to it, it was one thing to have these particular pieces of legislation or ordinances or resolutions, it’s a whole nother thing to build the infrastructure for it and operationalize it. And that’s literally what we’re trying to do in rapid response as well as long term.

And what more do you think the city would need from the federal government?

A radically different approach. This falls squarely under their jurisdiction, immigration policy, as well as coordination of resettlement. Those are things that we are not seeing in kind and we have been explicitly asking for, in addition to being able to commandeer federal land, being able to get some additional technical assistance and teams on the ground to be able to welcome individuals, process their paperwork for this temporary protective status extension and the employment authorization. That is going to be a game changer in terms of the sustainability of all of this work.

In terms of getting those resources from the federal government, what is it going to take? Just continued pressure?

We are in conversation with them. And we are being really explicit and direct with our asks and coordinated with the state as well as the county government. So that we’re all kind of speaking to the very deliberate ways that they can intervene, and they can support and they can enhance the capacity.

Since we’re talking about the federal government, the Biden administration is making access to work permits available for Venezuelans who arrived to the U.S. [by July 31]. But what does that mean for the thousands of Venezuelans and others who have arrived here since then?

It all depends on when they arrived. Just because they may be arriving now doesn’t mean that they did not cross the border by July 31. There is a backlog, right? So, it is really about drilling down to understand by what date did you arrive, what’s your country of origin? Do you fit the age criteria for TPS and work authorization, and then going from there. But I’ll say this, we still are calling upon all non citizens being able to have the ability to work and to have temporary protective status as well as to speed up the backlog of the application processing.

The city has entered into a contract with a firm to construct tent structures to house people over the winter. When will those camps, I guess be constructed? Where will they be? We’ve heard that there are some people who are pushing back, potentially saying that they don’t want these sorts of tent structures, these camps in their neighborhoods.

We are in the process, right now, of still identifying the exact locations and then therefore, the configurations of the type of structures, these prefabricated structures that are pretty sophisticated.  I think it’s important to not reference them as tents, because they do have HVAC, they do have steel structures. They’re a little bit more than just your kind of conventional camping tent with a heater.

I think the other thing that’s really important: understand the concerns. And that’s precisely why we are working really closely with the contractor to ensure that we are operationalizing our values, and that we are centering the dignity and the humanity of those that are seeking refuge and sanctuary in our city.

We will do that by looking at our operation manuals, our practice and policy within our brick and mortar shelters and ensure that it is in alignment with this change of venue. And we are working also by collecting feedback from our our partners on the ground, some of our mutual aid partners and our community based organizations who are providing the case management services in our brick and mortar shelter.

I think, really, what’s great about Chicago is that we know how to lean into when we have concerns and to transition and transform it into something that is going to live up to our values. And I’m really confident that we’ll be able to do that together.

The Johnson administration is stressing the need to move away from using police station lobbies as a point of intake. But more than 3,000 people are staying in police stations and airports as of this morning. So how soon will this sort of change be feasible?

It needed to happen yesterday. But as you know, you’ve cited, we’re getting double digit buses on a daily basis. In fact, from a week ago, today, we have received 53 buses. This is unprecedented.

So as much as we try, we actually were able to transition almost 900 individuals out of police stations, but we’ve added well over 1,000, then also in the airports. So, it’s just one of those situations where we are trying to get ahead of the number of buses that are coming. And that’s precisely why we felt that while we still need to open up these brick and mortars, we do need to lift up the idea around these base camps because it’s turnkey ready. And it is really an opportunity to kind of efficiently make this work and retire police stations as well as the staging area and airports.

In your eyes, can Chicago still call itself a sanctuary city?

That is absolutely what we are attempting to do every single day. That’s precisely why we are holding the line and leaning in and trying to be nimble, in a situation where literally, besides New York City…Chicago and New York have been the only ones that have been holding the line. I think what’s really important to note is that with the critiques with GardaWorld, while people pointed to Denver rejecting that contract, Denver has never sheltered. They actually have done exactly what Texas has done to everyone else. As people arrive in Denver, they get turned away, put on a bus or on a flight to Chicago or other places where they can seek sanctuary.