The same week a child living at a Chicago migrant shelter died and others were hospitalized, a group of medical providers close to the shelter are alleging health care services at the shelter are nowhere near what the city had promised.

Of the 2,500 people — more than half minors — living at the shelter at 2241 S. Halsted St. in Pilsen, just 400 had received any “basic health intake or screening,” according to a letter the group released late Friday evening.

Additionally, the medical provider for the shelter — by far the largest migrant site in Chicago — was present only once per week and for only four hours at a time, according to documents obtained through open records requests.

The authors of the letter sent it late Friday to city officials as a plea to “mobilize a collective effort to prevent further harm at all shelter locations” by opening them up to medical professionals who were previously volunteering to treat migrants.

The shelter’s current provider — Lawndale Christian Health Center — saw only about 30 patients per visit, advocates said, far too few given the thousands of people there.

The West Side-based health organization did not return calls throughout last week seeking details or comment about their work at the shelter.

Migrants living at the shelter also say they have received little to no medical aid there.

That stands in stark contrast to what the city has said regarding health services for migrants in shelters following the death of 5-year-old Jean Carlos Martínez Rivero, who died at the shelter or shortly afterwards on Sunday.

The city has said his death is under investigation. Autopsy results are pending and likely won’t be released for several weeks, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Since Martínez Rivero’s death, the city has said “we have implemented thorough health screenings at shelters” — but city officials have not responded to questions about how many migrants have actually been screened.

In a statement Friday evening, the Chicago Department of Public Health described them as “primary care” screenings that included a behavioral health assessment and substance use consultation. That statement also did not address questions of who performs the screenings or keeps track of them.

The statement does note that additional health teams have recently been deployed to the Pilsen shelter.

Michael Loria/Sun-Times

Migrants in shelters say they haven’t had the screenings.

Instead, with one cot next to another, everyone gets ill, said a father of a family staying at the Pilsen shelter. Fearing retaliation, he asked his name not be used. 

“Everyone’s sick, from adults to little kids,” he said. “What you get, the next person does, too.”

Physicians in clinics near shelters say many migrants’ doctor visits are their first since arriving — “despite being in Chicago for — sometimes — months,” said Dr. Rebekah Fenton, a physician at Alivio Medical Center, a clinic near the shelter that accepts uninsured patients.

Fenton, a specialist in treating adolescents, said the number of migrant patients they get has “significantly increased in the past few months since the shelter opened.”

Many visited initially for routine school vaccinations.

Later, those relatively healthy patients returned with illnesses Fenton had never expected to even treat — a sharp contrast from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s words Monday, when he said migrants being bused from Texas were “showing up sick.”

“I was trained to diagnose chickenpox but had never really seen it on patients,” Fenton said. “It’s been challenging to expand my thinking of what to expect.”

Other common illnesses include strep throat, flu and respiratory viruses.

That, she said, is a direct result of shelter conditions.

“Because of the close contact in which they’re living, they’re being exposed to things beyond what they should be,” she said.

“It sucks that a child’s death is what’s prompting this conversation,” Fenton said.

The letter, signed by several groups that have were treating migrant when they were camped out at police stations, is their latest effort to open up shelters to professionals willing to help.

The group held a press conference about the issue Thursday. Speakers included Fenton, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) and Sara Izquierdo, founder of the Mobile Migrant Health Team, a prominent group that treated migrants in stations.

“If the biggest problem is the red tape, we need to cut the red tape,” Izquierdo said Thursday. “We have all these resources in this beautiful giant city we are not using.”

Contributing: Lauren FitzPatrick, Brett Chase and Phyllis Cha.

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.