Chicago violated residents’ civil rights by relocating polluting business to Latino and Black neighborhood, federal agency finds

By Erik Ortiz and Safia Samee Ali, NBC News

“This federal investigation from HUD shows without a doubt that systemic racism in Chicago is creating sacrifice zones and putting the most vulnerable in harm’s way,” the advocacy groups that spurred the investigation said.

The city violated the civil rights of its residents by playing a “driving role” in the proposed relocation of a scrap metal facility with a history of pollution complaints from a mostly white neighborhood in Chicago’s North Side to a largely Latino and Black community in the Southeast Side, according to the results of a two-year-long federal investigation.

In a letter obtained by NBC News outlining its findings and delivered Tuesday to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it found that the city had a “broader policy of shifting polluting activities from White neighborhoods to Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, despite the latter already experiencing a disproportionate burden of environmental harms.” 

For the advocacy groups that spurred the federal government’s investigation, Tuesday’s findings came as a colossal victory.

“The tide of segregation and environmental racism in Chicago has been devastating Black and brown communities for far too long,” the groups said in a joint statement. “This federal investigation from HUD shows without a doubt that systemic racism in Chicago is creating sacrifice zones and putting the most vulnerable in harm’s way. All eyes are now on the Mayor’s office and City Council to take accountability and end the systems that allow the dirtiest industries to pile up in our communities.”

Learn more about this victory.

Unfortunately, pollution is killing Black Americans.

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