Ald. Julia Ramirez, (12th), who was confronted and assaulted by protesters last week over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s apparent Brighton Park tent plan, said she did not get advance notice about the site or its consideration as a temporary housing location for migrants.

“To my frustration, the Mayor’s office did not consult with me or my office about their current plans to construct a temporary shelter — meant to house 1,500 people — at 38th & California,” Ramirez asserts in a letter released late Sunday night.

Johnson first announced his plan to house migrants staying at police stations in “winterized base camps” in early September but has since revealed little else about those tent cities for at least 3,000 migrants awaiting shelter could go.

Ramirez’s letter aimed at correcting persistent rumors that the site in Brighton Park was confirmed and she was behind it.

Those rumors sparked the protest last Thursday where Ramirez was attacked and accused of foisting Johnson’s tent plan on the Southwest Side neighborhood without community consent.

Bill Drew Jr., Ramirez’s chief of staff, said Monday the freshman alderperson only heard the city was considering the site days before the protest when they asked the mayor’s office about city work crews at the site.

Drew said they contacted the property manager to ask “how the city was moving forward with the site” but didn’t get any information.

The owner of the site at 3708 S. California Ave. — the Barnacares Corporation according to the Cook County Clerk’s database — could not be reached for comment.

Ramirez never offered any sites, Drew said, aiming instead to support migrants by establishing local donation hubs.

“We understand this is a dire situation and there’s not a lot of permanent shelters available,” Drew said. “We just want to make sure there’s a good plan.”

The letter asserts Ramirez spoke directly with Gov. J.B. Pritzker over the weekend and with the White House, although Drew didn’t know the details of those conversations.

A spokesperson for Pritzker’s office said he had left her “a voicemail after her incident last week and staff communicated with the Alderperson that we will work to set up a return call with him this week.”

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

The Brighton Park site and another — at 115th and Halsted — are the only known potential sites, though Crisitina Pacione-Zayas, Johnson’s first deputy chief of staff, said some alderpeople had submitted potential sites by the second week of October. She said then that construction was “imminent.”

The city did not respond to requests for comment on whether it had made a deal with property owners.

Ramirez still plans on holding a community meeting Tuesday at 6 p.m. in Kelly High School, 4136 S. California Ave. 

On Friday, Drew attributed the ire seen last week — culminating in the attack on the freshman alderperson and her aide that required them to be whisked away by Chicago Police — to a piece of “misinformation” circulating in the community in an anonymous letter left at front doors by a “political rival.” 

Ramirez had every right to respond to that “misinformation,” said Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), Johnson’s City Council floor leader, that “falsely claimed she was part of a backroom deal to greenlight” a tent city at 38th and California.

“I wouldn’t say that she’s blaming the mayor. She is providing information to her residents and letting them know that this is not something that is up for aldermanic approval,” Ramirez-Rosa said. 

Brighton Park residents have every right to protest the winterized base camp, he added. But, the “xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment that we saw lead to violence” against Ramirez and her top aide last week was “totally unacceptable and has got to stop.”

It will not deter the mayor from proceeding with the tent city plan.

“This is something that the city is doing because we have to meet this moment and ensure that people are sheltered, particularly as the days get colder,” the floor leader said. “Difficult decisions need to be made, and [Johnson’s] making those difficult decisions.”

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Teddy Salazar, a nearby resident, said those protests continued through the weekend. 

The operator of a local day care who has been trying to organize their neighbors in support of migrants, Salazar, 29, said the city could have precluded any protests by being more transparent about their plans.

That lack of transparency allows “even educated adults” to fall for the kind of “misinformation” contained in the anonymous letter, Salazar said, which was then recirculated on local Facebook groups. 

Like Ramirez-Rosa, they took issue with the violence but said they hope that it will spurn the city to be more forthcoming.

“I hope that the city will see that there’s this population of people who feel very unheard,” said Salazar. “People are feeling like they don’t really know where these encampments are going and not feeling like you’re being heard by your city is very important, and it’s one of those things that’s scary when you live in such a large city.”

Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.