A young migrant mother from Venezuela is facing felony charges after she allegedly blocked traffic and scuffled with police officers outside a Southwest Side police station on Saturday, apparently in protest over access to bathrooms.
Dayrelys Yojana Coy, 21, was arrested shortly before 4 p.m. Saturday outside the 8th District police station in the 3400 block of West 63rd Street, according to a police report on the incident.
Coy, whose address is listed as the Casa Michaoacan nonprofit facility in the 1600 block of South Blue Island Avenue, was charged with three counts of resisting or obstructing police, which is a Class 4 felony, as well as a misdemeanor citation of obstructing traffic, according to the report.
Coy was released Sunday afternoon on a recognizance bond and ordered by Cook County Judge Maryam Ahmad to have no “unlawful contact” with the 8th District, records show. Her next court date is Friday.
She was represented by a public defender whose name was not listed in the court record. No one answered the phone Sunday at the Cook County public defender’s office.
According to the police report, Coy was confronted as she stood in the middle of West 63rd Street along with “physical barriers” that were completely blocking traffic.
After officers ordered her to get out of the street, she went to the sidewalk and shouted in Spanish, “If you don’t like the uproar today, there will be an uproar if the bathrooms don’t open,” according to the report.
When an officer told her she was being placed under arrest for blocking traffic, Coy allegedly “pulled away” and “flailed her arms” and then “stiffened her body in order to defeat the arrest,” according to the report.
Three of the arresting officers suffered minor injuries in the scuffle, according to the report. The court sheet from Sunday’s bond hearing noted that officers’ injuries included a “puncture wound,” “abrasion” and “laceration.”
The police report stated Coy’s toddler-age child was left in the care of a fellow migrant following her arrest.
Video of the incident sent to the Tribune by a source showed several migrants arguing with police at the desk about access to the bathrooms in the station. A higher-ranking officer speaking in English could be seen telling the migrants through another officer translating into Spanish that there were portable toilets for them outside and to take it up with the city if they had an issue.
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As the argument grew heated, the ranking officer said, “It is what it is, and that’s it. They gotta go.”
Another part of the video from outside the station showed a group of at least five officers around Coy, who briefly whips her arms away from them as they try to handcuff her behind her back. A child could be heard screaming as she is led away, with a supporter shouting, “You told her she had one more time to do it, and then you arrested her out of nowhere.”
Chicago police stations have become a symbol of the growing migrant crisis as hundreds of asylum-seekers have been sleeping on the floors of police facilities around the city. As of a week ago, 1,576 migrants were living in Chicago police stations and another 418 were sleeping inside O’Hare International Airport, according to city data.
Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday offered a peek at his plans to move the migrants into large tent camps throughout the city before winter — his administration’s boldest effort yet to get a handle on a humanitarian crisis that has left local officials vexed.
The mayor said he will “move with expediency” to transition asylum-seekers into “more suitable” base camps as migrants wait for spots in city-run shelters.
Chicago Tribune’s Gregory Royal Pratt contributed.