Hundreds of migrants have been living in a terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport — some for weeks — as the Second City struggles to keep pace with the flood of asylum seekers flowing into the city.

About 500 migrants — from babies to the elderly — have been housed behind a heavy black curtain in a shuttle-bus terminal at the busy airport as Chicago officials scramble to set up tent cities to accommodate more than 14,000 asylum seekers flown in over the past year.

The migrants sleep on cardboard pads on the floor, share public bathrooms and occasionally slip out from behind the curtain, dozing just feet from passing travelers — with a private company hired to keep tabs on them. 

“It was supposed to be a stop-and-go place,” said Vianney Marzullo, a volunteer at the airport. “It’s very concerning. It is not just a safety matter but a public-health matter.”

Much like New York and other Democratic “Sanctuary Cities” that deal with migrants more leniently, Chicago has struggled to keep pace with the influx of asylum seekers, slowly moving people out of temporary spaces and into shelters and, in the near future, tents.

But the city’s use of the bustling transportation hub as a makeshift shelter is unusual, with other overburdened cities rejecting the idea as haphazard and potentially unsafe for everyone involved. 

Some of the airport migrants spend weeks at the O’Hare terminal until being moved to police stations, sheriff’s offices or to a shelter when a rare slot opens up. 

In the meantime, they are packed into a space smaller than a city block.

“Is it perfect? No,” said Illinois State Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, a Democrat. “But what we have done is stood in our values to ensure that we live up to operationalizing a ‘Sanctuary City.’ We will continue to work on it, but we are holding the line.”

Pacione-Zayas said the city is slowly building capacity to properly house its asylum seekers and added 15 shelters with about 3,000 beds since May.

The migrants are served 190,000 meals weekly and partnered with groups for medical care, although the system still relies heavily on volunteers to fill gaps.

But sickness can spread quickly at the terminal, where there is limited first aid. A volunteer team of doctors visited once over the summer and saw their medical supplies quickly decimated.

Chicago offers meals, but only at specific times, and many foods are unfamiliar to the new arrivals. 

While migrants who are closer to downtown Chicago have greater access to a network of well-meaning volunteers, the food and clothing donations at the O’Hare site are greatly limited because of airport security concerns, asylum advocates say.

Most of the migrants arriving in Chicago in the past year are from Texas, largely sent north by controversial Lone Star Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Nearly 3,000 have arrived by plane since June seeking shelter.

Many are from Venezuela, where a political, social and economic crisis in the past decade has pushed millions of people into poverty. At least 7.3 million have fled and risked a harrowing journey into the US. 

Maria Daniela Sanchez Valera, 26, said she passed through Panama’s dangerous Darien Gap jungle with her 2-year-old daughter to get across the border and arrived at O’Hare only days ago.

She fled her native Venezuela five years ago for Peru, where her daughter was born. After her daughter’s father was killed, she left. 

Although the Biden Administration recently offered temporary legal status and work permits to Venezuelans, Valera missed the deadline to apply.

“We come here with the intention of working, not with the intention of being given everything,” she said.

She tries to keep her toddler entertained with walks around the terminal because she said she doesn’t have the $5 necessary to take a subway into the city. 

“There are many people who have been able to get out, and they say that in the garbage dumps, you can get good clothes for the children,” she said.

Other cities have opposed using their airports to deal with the crisis.

At Boston’s Logan International Airport, migrants who arrive overnight are given cots for a few hours before being sent elsewhere. Massport spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan said Logan “is not the appropriate place” to stay.

When reports of a possible federal plan to use the Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey as a shelter surfaced recently, local pols blasted the idea.

“It is such a preposterous solution to the problems we have,” said Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson. “Who is going to secure these people? Who is going to feed them? Who is going to educate them? 

“We really don’t have any infrastructure to take care of them.”

With Post wires