Wilmette

In different times, the tiny brick Metra station in the town of Wilmette in suburban Chicago was just a place where commuters grabbed lattes and waited on black metal benches before boarding trains to the city.

When busloads of migrants are dropped off in Wilmette — where their chaperones help them catch trains to downtown Chicago to be transferred to a shelter — they are first met by volunteers at the Wilmette station and given a few essentials.

In Wilmette, a town of 27,000 people where the median household income is about $183,000, dozens of residents have mobilized to help the migrants with clothing and other needs before they board trains for the so-called landing zone in downtown Chicago, where they are then routed to shelters around the city.

Shayla Smith, who was headed to work in Wilmette, had just boarded a Purple Line train at Howard when she heard the collision.

But he assured fans he would “absolutely, one-hundred percent” return to the pop-punk group he helped found in Wilmette, Ill., in 2001.