“Brother, do you know where the shelter is?” Enrique González, 29, pushes a suitcase with wheels and holds a Venezuelan flag with stiff hands, while he quickens his pace and guides an expedition with his brother José and two other compatriots to find a place to sleep. The thermometer reads four degrees below zero in Chicago. The group spent the night at a police station, but were told they could only stay for a few hours and then they would have to make a living. Finding a roof over your head, even temporarily, is crucial. The promised land is a couple of streets ahead. The hostel in the Pilsen neighborhood is an old brick building, with six floors and the entrance covered with gray sheeting. It is the largest in the city. More than 2,300 people came to live there at the peak of the migration crisis, but this week it only has capacity for 200. “Everything is there.” full“It’s the last thing we have left,” says González, while clinging to his things and good humor to keep his hopes intact.
In the midst of a confrontation with Greg Abbott, governor of Texas and symbol of Republican anti-immigrant sentiment, hundreds and hundreds of buses full of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers were sent from the border state to Chicago and other sanctuary cities to challenge his immigration policy. open doors. Since August 2022, the city has received more than 51,000 newcomers, mainly Venezuelans, according to official figures. “We have stood up for ourselves and shown the world how hospitable we can be,” Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson declared last October.
Two years after the immigration dispute, the third most populated metropolis in the United States showed wear and tear and recognized that it could no longer guarantee a bed for everyone. In recent months, Johnson announced the closure of dozens of shelters and the integration of a new foster care system, with only five centers open. Since December, there are no longer exclusive sites for migrants and now they have to share places with homeless people, under the argument of high costs, the absence of federal support and the drop in flows due to the winter. Before, Johnson tried other solutions, such as housing migrants under huge tents and tents in the open, which proved unfeasible due to the extreme temperatures and earned him severe criticism. In January and February, record lows have been around 30 degrees below zero.
With the new arrangement, the options of the migrant community have been reduced. Alejandra Sierra walks the empty streets to collect cardboard and other recyclable materials in the garbage containers. “I lost my job and I no longer have to pay the rent.” [alquiler]”They charge us $1,500 a month and the landlord is about to kick us out,” explains the 30-year-old Venezuelan.
Sierra and her husband are desperately looking for sources of income for their five children. Her husband has stayed at a traffic light to ask for money and take care of the youngest, who is barely three years old and takes refuge from the cold in her stroller. “No one supports us,” complains Reinaldo, his eldest son. “We went to the shelter, but they told us that there was no more space for all of us,” says his mother, before disappearing into an alley. After four months in the United States, the family is already thinking about returning to Caracas. Others have resigned themselves to living under bridges, common areas of airports or in makeshift camps on the streets.
Xóchitl Bada, an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explains that Venezuelans have fewer support networks than other more entrenched communities and are forced to compete among themselves for the lowest-paying jobs and expensive rents in the city center. “It is a cannibalistic logic due to the absence of public policies to find them a space to live and work in other parts of the urban area,” he says.
Despite the difficulties they face, tensions have grown with other Latino immigrants who claim that the US authorities “have given them everything on a silver platter” – shelters, work permits and social benefits – and that “no one gave them anything.” ”. Anti-Venezuelan sentiment is aggravated in a society where half of the people consider the poor situation of the economy as the biggest problem they face, according to the CBS network. The reality, Bada points out, is that the majority receive temporary permits and amnesties while they process asylum and often, the supports are not enough to give them a push to permanently support themselves.
“I have been to four different shelters,” says Jesús Gómez, 20 years old. “They help a lot, they give us food, the basics, but it is not what one wants to have; “I’m a boy and I know what I’m capable of, but they haven’t given me my work permit or my papers and I can’t stop thinking about all the lost time,” says the young man. Frustrated after a year in the city, he has returned to the hostel in Pilsen.
A worker in the reception system who requests anonymity affirms that many migrants have stopped trying and admits that others have bet everything on abusing the system and living off of aid. “I worked in several places and many times you would meet the same people, going from one place to another,” he says. It is a vicious circle of revolving doors, which reduces spaces for newcomers and large groups traveling with their families. “Sometimes they let you stay longer, but almost always after a month or two, you have to find another place.”
“It’s horrible, this is not a shelter,” laments Josué Romero, 23, who has just spent his first night. Since its opening at the end of 2023, the Pilsen shelter has been embroiled in controversy due to testimonies of deplorable conditions – from the food to the bathrooms – and the death of Jean Carlos Martínez, a five-year-old Venezuelan boy, due to an infection. In November alone there were more than 270 hospital transfers from the Pilsen shelter, 86 of children, according to an NBC investigation.
After the Jean Carlos tragedy, local and national media put the center, operated by the private company Favorite Healthcare Staffing, under scrutiny, which has been awarded $342 million in contracts, along with other facilities. The shelters have been surrounded by opacity, suspicions of overpricing and mistreatment. The company has declined requests for comment from media outlets that point them out, as well as authorities, who have also been hit. Mayor Johnson has assured, however, that prices have been renegotiated with contractors to lower costs.
“Before it wasn’t like this, now it’s worse,” Gómez tells Romero, while they go out to smoke a cigarette. The new arrangement to accommodate the homeless population with the undocumented has been problematic. Romero excitedly narrates how a migrant was attacked by an apparently intoxicated man and how the fight ended with the expulsion of his compatriot. “It’s hard to be here, but the hunger you go through with Maduro hurts more,” says the boy.
Everything is complicated with the return of Donald Trump to the White House on January 20 and the promises of a tough line against immigration. “I came here because here is a sanctuary city and Trump can’t touch us, but if things get complicated, I will go to Canada,” says Romero. “I just want to work and earn money, whatever it is,” he adds. Juan Carlos Santana, 36 years old, is one of those who has managed to make his way. “It cost us a lot, but three months ago we managed to become independent, it is possible to move forward,” he says. After navigating the foster care system, he now lives with his wife and children in an apartment.
“It’s a very old lawsuit,” says Bada about the harassment against Chicago and other sanctuary cities. The metropolis, with a third of the Latino population, began a long path in the eighties to guarantee access to services, non-discrimination and non-persecution of its inhabitants, regardless of their immigration status. But its tradition of respect for immigrants has antecedents that even go back to the 1930s and is rooted in its identity as a city. It is also one of the strongholds of the Democratic Party.
Since Trump’s first presidency, there have been years of threats of raids in neighborhoods such as Little Village, prominently Mexican and one of the largest commercial corridors. In December, Tom Homan, the next border czar, warned that mass deportations would begin in Chicago. “If you impede our passage, if you knowingly harbor or hide an illegal alien, I will prosecute you,” he declared of the mayor.
While the immigration crisis rages in the United States and the political crisis worsens in Venezuela, hundreds of immigrants are playing their last cards before being thrown out into the cold on the streets or forced to move. González and his group are against time. The authorities announced a maximum capacity of 6,800 places available in the reception system, with the Pilsen shelter converted into a temporary shelter for transfer to four other shelters. On Friday, a day after finding him in the middle of his expedition, the temperature dropped, but a light snow fell. Next week is expected to be even harsher, with temperature forecasts between seven and thirteen degrees below zero next Monday.
