A real estate developer claims he has received a death threat from a local politician for housing nearly 500 asylum seekers in 15 of his buildings in Chicago.
Chris Amatore said he spent $150,000 of his own money preparing the buildings for occupancy, paying utilities and providing groceries to migrants.
The successful developer who has bought, renovated and sold more than 600 buildings in the city said he was now focusing on the migrant crisis.
“I have dedicated my life for the foreseeable future to housing homeless Venezuelan asylum seekers in Chicago. To stand with them against the hate,” his Twitter bio read.
However, Councilman Greg Mitchell called Amatore to a meeting last Monday and demanded to know why he was harboring migrants in his neighborhood and, Amatore claims, “threatened his life.”
Chris Amatore fixes a smoke detector in one of fifteen buildings around Chicago that he has converted into housing for 500 migrants
Joselin Mendoza, 29, from left, Ireanyerlin Hernandez, 8, Yusmary Covis, 1, and Robinson Covis, 25, gather in a home they share with other families from Venezuela
Amatore’s mission took on new importance with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new policy of expelling migrants from shelters after 60 days.
He faced backlash from locals who were unhappy that he had dozens of new neighbors, including some who had called the police.
Police responded to his building on Essex Avenue on Chicago’s South Shore after neighbors said dozens of migrants were “breaking in.”
Police radio calls intercepted by scanners showed officers responding to what the caller said were 40 to 50 migrants breaking into the home.
However, subsequent discussions revealed that the building’s owner, Amatore, had “allowed the migrants to be there.”
Now Amatore Mitchell, a city representative, is accusing him of additional pressure in a complaint to Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, which was also emailed to all 50 Chicago council members.
He claimed Mitchell wanted to know why he was helping migrants and not the area’s homeless black residents.
“Mitchell immediately began pointing his finger at me and raising his voice, telling me that I am a problem to him and how dare I place immigrants in his neighborhood without his permission,” the complaint alleged.
“We are all God’s souls and I make no distinction between skin color when I decide to help someone,” he replied.
Amatore (pictured) has made it his mission to house homeless migrants in Chicago
Jeremy Hernandez, 10, from left, Francisco Hernandez, 31, Joselin Mendoza, 29, Yesmary Mendoza, 9, Maria Malpica, 28, and Ireanyerlin Hernandez, 8, walk to a bus stop while commuting to school in Roseland
Amatore claimed that an irate Mitchell said, “You better watch your damn ass walk through my department because you’re no longer safe.”
“You have a damn CHA contract don’t you, consider that terminated after I make one phone call, you can kiss that damn goodbye.”
Amatore explained that Mitchell threatened to terminate a Chicago Housing Authority contract that his company Manage Chicago had and block a potential zoning change.
He wrote that he invited Mitchell to come to one of the buildings and meet the migrants himself, and offered to “find a place in another councilor’s department if the migrants were not allowed.”
“I offered to help move the migrants if he told me where to take them,” he wrote in the complaint, insisting he had not received any money to house the migrants.
Mitchell has complained in the past that a $33 million federal grant could only be used for migrants, while a $3.5 million state grant for thirteen homeless shelters was open to anyone.
Contacted for comment on the complaint, Mitchell previously said he could not speak about the meeting because he had not yet seen the complaint.
Amatore said the venture was funded by a significant windfall he made investing in cryptocurrency.
‘I worship God. I don’t worship money. So I decided to use that money to do something good with it,” he told CBS.
“Something like this happened to me, and I feel like I’m following God’s plan and just trying to help.”
Amatore claimed councilor Greg Mitchell (pictured) ‘threatened his life’ during a heated meeting
Maria Malpica, 28, from Venezuela, looks in the refrigerator in the Amatore home she shares with other migrant families
Amatore said he was moved to help when he saw a migrant camp where “no one could shower, people were eating out of trash cans.”
His efforts quickly expanded from the first building, which had 60 beds in eight units, to helping nearly ten times as many people.
However, Amatore admitted that his altruistic campaign was something of a cowboy move, as it did not go through official channels.
He has no idea how long he can last and no long-term plan, simply bringing in immigrants on the fly and figuring out the details later.
“If a fire happened and someone got hurt, I would be in trouble,” he told police Chicago Tribune.
Building owners can fill out a form to check if their property meets the requirements for housing migrants, and are then vetted by the Department of Family and Support Services and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
Amatore did none of that, and its buildings may not be up to code, but migrants are still free to stay there.
Video from across the street showed dozens of people breaking into a three-story building on Essex Avenue on Chicago’s South Shore on Sunday
In a later video, crowds form outside the building after more arrive on buses
The buildings have functioning kitchens and bathrooms but little or no furniture, so migrants sleep on mattresses or blankets on the floor.
This at least leaves enough space for the many children who live there to run around and play on the bare floors.
None of the migrants are complaining, happy to be out of the squalid conditions in many of the 28 city-run shelters home to 14,000 people.
“Luckily God gave us this opportunity to come here. So we can move on with our lives,” Idalia Rodriguez, an asylum seeker who arrived from Venezuela with her children aged six, 10 and 15, told the Tribune.
Other migrants called him “an angel who fell from the sky.”
Adults take turns accompanying the children during the hour-plus drive to school, and back at the end of the day.
Robinson Covis, 25, from left, Abel Gonzalez, 27, and Daniel Antonio Ruiz, 21, all from Venezuela, watch as Amatore installs a smoke detector
Before taking his children to school, Francisco Hernandez, 31, from Venezuela, stands in the basement where he lives in the Amatore building shared by several migrant families
Amadore with some of the 60 migrants he housed in another building he owned
But Amatore’s efforts are just a drop in the bucket compared to the 5,000 migrants who have already been served with eviction notices from city shelters.
They were originally due to be evicted last week, but the deadline was extended several times and has now been postponed until the end of winter to prevent families from taking to the streets in the freezing cold.
Chicago will use up the $150 million set aside to fund the crisis by April, with dozens more arriving by buses and planes from the border every day.
Mayor Johnson himself says the massive influx of migrants is unsustainable, but he can’t turn them away because Chicago is a “sanctuary city.”
He blamed both the Biden administration and Texas for his city’s struggle to care for the asylum seekers locked up in shelters across the city.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sent more than 30,800 migrants to Chicago since August 2022.