The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.
Volume 11, Issue 21
Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato
Managing Editor Adam Przybyl
Investigations Editor Jim Daley
Senior Editors Martha Bayne Christopher Good Olivia Stovicek
The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.
Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:
South Side Weekly
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IN CHICAGO
We’re not going anywhere
Two weeks ago, we were sending our previous issue to the printers as polls began to close and results trickled in. As we’re sure our readers will have picked up by now, president-elect Donald Trump will be returning to the White House and Republicans will control the House and Senate as well. While we won’t spend time here analyzing what went wrong for Democrats, we do think it’s important to push back against a narrative of a “red wave.” While it’s true Trump did marginally better, the story (in our eyes) is that Kamala Harris received far fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020. Basically, Democrats failed to mobilize their base.
Chicago overwhelmingly voted blue in favor of Harris, but Trump gained about five percentage points compared to 2020, or about 21 percent of the vote. While Harris secured the West Side, as well as the South Side’s Black Belt, Trump had pockets of supporters on the far North and Northwest Side, as well as the far Southwest Side— namely Mount Greenwood, Morgan Park, Beverly, Garfield Ridge, and Clearing. Parts of Canaryville and Chinatown, on the near Southwest Side, also leaned right, as well as Hegewisch and South Deering on the far Southeast Side. While Trump got about 20,000 more votes this year than in 2020, Harris lost some 175,000 votes compared to Biden four years ago.
Many people in our communities are worried about what the next four years will bring. Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that Trump and allies were considering cuts to Medicaid and SNAP—policy choices that would impact families all over the city. Trump has threatened to enact mass deportations of 20 million people and made up lies about immigrants that have stoked fears and tensions. One of the stories in this issue, from MindSite News, looks at how immigrant communities are needing more mental health resources in the midst of dealing with Trump’s rhetoric. And as journalists, we’re wary of Trump’s attacks on the media. This week, Congress will debate a bill that could allow Trump to target and shut down any nonprofits—like us—that his administration considers a threat.
While we plan to cover these decisions and their impacts on the South Side, we’re also gearing up to expand our coverage of the ways people are resisting and building power and community at the local level: mutual aid groups, tenant organizations, unions, artist collectives, and more.
Trump likes to single out Chicago, and especially the South Side, in his speeches. We don’t particularly care to try to convince his supporters that Chicago is a great city. We care about getting it right for our readers and communities, for the people who trust us to report on complex issues with nuance and compassion, to capture oral histories and uplift emerging artists, and spotlight the people doing necessary, radical work across the South Side. We’re going to continue doing that, with your support.
Weekly reporters win Chicago Journalists Association award
On Friday, the Weekly’s investigations editor Jim Daley and investigative reporter Max Blaisdell won a Chicago Journalists Association Sarah Brown Boyden Award in the technology category for their story “Missed Shots,” published earlier this year. The 85th annual awards ceremony, which honored the best journalism in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, was held at the Newberry Library on the Near North Side. Daley and Blaisdell’s winning series was the result of a months-long investigation of ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot-detection company.
The investigation combined leaked company emails, public-records requests, interviews, on-the-ground reporting, and data analysis. Daley and Blaisdell found hundreds of shootings that the Chicago Police Department reported were missed by ShotSpotter sensors. The pair uncovered ShotSpotter executives’ internal discussions about their inability to repair broken sensors in Chicago and found they were warned repeatedly about electrical code violations. They also found ShotSpotter sensors in police districts the City hadn’t previously acknowledged them being in, and revealed that the company has continued collecting gunshot data in cities where contracts had been canceled.
IN THIS ISSUE
sanctuary in the schoolyard?
Beyond narratives of interracial tensions and solidarity.
shelter contractor ‘failed’ clients as complaints mounted, staffers say Chicago is phasing out Favorite Healthcare Staffing after paying the agency $342 million to oversee its shelters.
emeline posner, investigative project on race and equity, borderless magazine 9
contratista municipal ‘falló’ mientras aumentaban las quejas de refugios para migrantes, según empleados
Chicago está gradualmente eliminando a Favorite Healthcare Staffing después de haber pagado $342 millones a la agencia para supervisar su sistema de refugios.
por emeline posner, investigative project on race and equity, borderless magazine traducido por borderless magazine 14
public meetings report A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
scott pemberton, documenters ......... 18 trump’s return sparks anxiety among chicago immigrants Immigrant-led coalitions are providing support amid fears of mass deportations and violence. alma campos, mindsite news ............... 19 calendar Bulletin
Cover by Julie Merrell
Blaisdell, who is a fellow at the Invisible Institute and a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald, also won a Sarah Brown Boyden Award Friday for feature writing in Chicago Magazine for his piece on a University of Chicago professor detained in Iran. Daley, who was the Weekly’s politics editor before stints at the Reader and The TRiiBE, returned to the newspaper to found its Investigations Hub last year. Under his direction, the Weekly has published investigations of two CPD superintendents, hidden NASCAR Street Race costs, taxpayer funding of Sox Park, and the City’s migrant response. The Investigations Hub also provides workshops on public-records requests and works with community residents to empower them with investigative tools.
Sanctuary in the Schoolyard?
Beyond narratives of interracial tensions and solidarity.
BY MAGGIE RIVERA
The Weekly is using pseudonyms for the people interviewed in this story.
The bus ride to Wadsworth, a shuttered elementary school on the South Side, was another stop in a more than 4,000-mile journey from the other side of the world. Many of the people on the bus had traveled one of the world’s deadliest migration routes to reach the United States. Then they were relocated to Chicago as part of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s busing program. Many would work to send money to their families, who were facing
rampant hyperinflation. Some would find apartments in the city of Chicago, while others would move once again to the suburbs or another city altogether.
For some of the neighbors living near Wadsworth, the bright yellow school bus was a cruel and ironic reminder that the makeshift migrant shelter had once been home to a vibrant school community. Ten years earlier, then-mayor Rahm Emanuel had led efforts to close the building as part of a larger wave of public school closings. The decision resulted in the largest wave of school closings in a district at any one time in the nation’s history. By the end of
June 2013, the city had closed fifty public schools, in many of the city’s already disinvested—and predominantly Black and Latinx—neighborhoods.
Since August 2022, Texas governor Greg Abbott has sent over 44,000 migrants to Chicago on buses and planes. Over the past two years, Chicago’s government has also faced pushback from some of the city’s residents to open new emergency shelters in their neighborhoods. The phrases “BlackLatino tensions” and “Black vs. Brown,” began to dot the media landscape, and some journalists suggested that Governor
Greg Abbott’s “test” of America’s sanctuary cities was working. In July 2023, a public video captured a fight between several men living at the Wadsworth shelter and a family living adjacent to it. The caption read “Woodlawn Residents vs. Migrants at Wadsworth.” Chicago, long a poster child of racial strife and segregation, served as a perfect foil for the right-wing narrative that liberal policies are not only foolish but doomed to fail. Stories of intercommunity tensions on the South Side are not new. The city of Chicago, often derided by president-elect Donald Trump, has become the focal
Joffrey Company Artist Yumi Kanazawa. Photo by Todd Rosenberg.
point for the hopes and anxieties that have rattled national politics: the southern border, sanctuary city ordinances, racial tensions, and gun violence. Some local journalists and activists have instead argued that Chicago’s response to Abbott’s busing program has been a lasting testament to the potential for interracial solidarity, that Chicago’s communities can transcend differences and work together to fight for resources. Borderless Magazine, spotlighting one Woodlawn church’s efforts to provide English language classes to incoming migrants, described how communities were coming together in the face of tensions.
The diverging narratives of interracial
tensions or solidarity reflect a much larger debate about America’s reputation as a “nation of immigrants” and Chicago’s standing as a sanctuary city. How do South Side residents’ frustrations over a migrant shelter challenge both narratives, instead forcing all Chicagoans to reckon with the complexities of living in a segregated and unequal sanctuary city?
History Repeats Itself
In the fall of 2023, I began interviewing Woodlawn residents who lived near Wadsworth for a project entitled Sanctuary in the Schoolyard? The title took inspiration from Dr. Eve Ewing’s book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, which unpacks
why residents of Bronzeville protested plans to close Dyett High School over ten years ago.
At the time that protesters in Bronzeville fought to keep Dyett open, Woodlawn residents advocated that the Wadsworth building remain open as a public school. In 2013, the Emanuel administration released plans requiring Wadsworth students and staff to relocate to Dumas Academy’s building. The plan had two goals: first, that the WadsworthDumas merger would functionally absorb Dumas. Second, the University of Chicago’s charter school would use the Wadsworth building to expand its enrollment. Some residents felt the plan both upended the lives of students and
prioritized the growth of a private charter school over investment in Woodlawn’s public school communities.
“Nicole,” a Woodlawn resident of almost fifteen years, had personal connections to the former Wadsworth school community and protested the merger. She remembers when the Emanuel administration announced its plans for Wadsworth and Dumas. “I knew all the teachers in the building, and I know that they did not want to be moved away from there.”
After Wadsworth merged with Dumas, the University of Chicago charter school instead moved out of the Wadsworth building to a new facility. In 2017, with the building completely
The former campus of Wadsworth Elementary School, which was closed in 2013, was used as a temporary shelter for migrants in 2023.
Photo by Jim Daley
vacant, nearby residents sought ways to repurpose Wadsworth. “Sylvie,” the founder of a neighborhood nonprofit, began brainstorming other options for Wadsworth with her neighbors. Some residents proposed turning the building into a Community Center for Performing Arts. Another idea was to repurpose the space into a center for tech training and workforce development. “The tech center, I really thought that that was a done deal,” Sylvie told me, as did other residents. “Because I went to numerous meetings about [the building] being a tech center…. There were so many meetings, and I really thought that it was a done deal.”
The plans were part of a larger ongoing effort to develop parts of Woodlawn. Over the past decade, homicide rates have decreased drastically, while median income and homeownership rates have increased. In 2019, a new grocery store opened in Woodlawn; in 2022, the neighborhood’s residents hosted its first Black Wall Street festival.
In many ways, parts of today’s Woodlawn sit in stark contrast to the Woodlawn that existed ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, when some residents told me that they were afraid to go outside. Nevertheless, community organizers and local nonprofits continue to fight to make the neighborhood affordable, safe, and resourced. In particular, several neighborhood groups advocate for housing affordability as residents’ rents and property taxes increase, due to the ongoing construction of the Obama Presidential Center.
Although Woodlawn has seen significant development in recent years, the plan for the tech center never came to fruition. In October 2022, maintenance began on Wadsworth at a time when there were only a few migrant shelters located on the North and Northwest Sides. It was not until residents asked local government officials and maintenance workers what was going on that they learned about the city’s plan to turn the building into a temporary shelter for housing migrants.
Once the news was out, Woodlawn residents began protesting the city’s plan. Seemingly, the protests did change
the course of the plan for Wadsworth. The Lightfoot administration, which replaced the Emanuel administration in 2019, confirmed that the shelter plan was “dead.”
Before New Year’s Eve 2022, Woodlawn residents again received notice that the city was reversing its decision once more: several hundred migrants would be moved into the building in the coming week. For the second time, the city organized last-minute meetings about the plans for the Wadsworth school building-turned-shelter. And yet, residents were given no information about how their input would change the
Community Council and Woodlawn Diversity in Action met to discuss an alternative shelter option located in the former Paderewski Elementary school building. The group discussed why Paderewski, instead of Wadsworth, would be a better option for newly arrived migrants, due to the surrounding language and cultural resources. City officials, however, told the coalition that Paderewski was “not rehabable.”
In February 2023, the Wadsworth shelter opened. In January, city officials told Woodlawn residents that 250 people would live in the Wadsworth building. Six months after its opening, the building
The city of Chicago, often derided by president-elect Donald Trump, has become the focal point for the hopes and anxieties that have rattled national politics: the southern border, sanctuary city ordinances, racial tensions, and gun violence.
current shelter plan. The outcome of the December meeting: the shelter opening was delayed one month.
A city contractor told me that, out of the twenty-two shuttered school buildings still available to the city, Wadsworth was the “most cost effective.” With migrants sleeping on the floor of the police stations, and no support from the federal government, he stressed that the city was trying to keep costs down when they decided to open the Wadsworth shelter.
However, for many community members, the city’s decision made little sense, given the building’s location in a residential area with few nearby language and cultural resources. Chicago residents affiliated with the Little Village
was housing 600 men and eighty women. In June, the first death in a city-run shelter was reported in Wadsworth: a twentysix-year old man who was pronounced dead at the scene and “foaming at the mouth.” A nearby church held a memorial service for the man in late June. A few weeks later, the Wadsworth shelter was still open and overcrowded. On July 13th, a fight broke out. It was then that a local Instagram account posted the video captioned “Woodlawn residents vs. Wadsworth migrants.”
Through Residents’ Eyes
In October 2022, Nicole noticed that maintenance workers were working at “odd hours of the day” on the shuttered
Wadsworth building. She finally approached the workers, wondering if they were starting work on the community’s proposal for the building. Instead, she heard about the city’s plan to move newly arrived migrants into the building the very next week. “My very first reaction is they never tell us. It was a matter of respect and transparency. They were going to move them in. And we would never have known ‘til they were there…I’m never against migrants coming, never. I think that if I lived in another country, and we were having all these problems, I would leave and want to come to America…It’s just the way they did it, the lack of transparency and participation from the community to just put the people in our back doors.”
As plans took shape, Sylvie was one of the Woodlawn residents who had been part of the working group to propose Paderewski as a possible shelter location. She emphasized that frustrations with Wadsworth were “not a racial issue,” but a “human one.” As a Woodlawn resident for over a decade, she foresaw problems with placing hundreds of people in a neighborhood without existing language resources or immigration integration services. All of these signs pointed to a disastrous outcome, both for Woodlawn residents and new arrivals.
Despite her collaboration with members of the Little Village Community Council, the mayoral administration moved forward with its plan to open the shelter in Woodlawn.
With the Wadsworth building repurposed to house migrants, Sylvie reflected on the environment that had emerged around the shelter when we met. “We just came through COVID. People are aware of when you can’t go anywhere. How that feels and how it mentally can disturb a person when adults have nothing to do,” she said. “They’re coming through the neighborhood, they’re roaming. And that should not really be an issue, to be honest. But when you have nothing to do, you have no funds, can’t find a job… I mean, that’s a breeding ground for negativity.”
Like her neighbors, she felt that the decision to house over 600 single, young,
and mostly male adults in the middle of a residential area with few commercial developments had been a mistake. It reintroduced an environment that she and other neighbors felt would breed pentup frustration, infighting, drug use, and crime. Although the neighborhood had, through decades of community and nonprofit organizing, grown and thrived in the face of disinvestment and past gang violence, the city had crammed hundreds of people in inhumane conditions. In some ways, the conditions that Woodlawn and Wadsworth residents described hold resemblance to some of the city’s past efforts to build public housing for African American residents—housing projects that were ultimately declared “national symbols of the failure of urban policy.”
According to people who lived at the Wadsworth shelter during the summer of 2023, classrooms would sometimes house as many as fifty people. Similar to reports at other city-run shelters, residents complained of moldy food, hour-long waits for showers, cramped sleeping areas, and tensions with shelter staff. Without work permits or prior connections to the city, many of the residents staying at Wadsworth would spend time on the abandoned playground equipment, forced to be idle.
“I just want the misery to end,” a twenty-five-year-old man from Venezuela told me in the summer of 2023. “We are good people,” he repeated over and over. “But some, they are not mature.” Six months later, I saw him again outside of the shelter, the night before temperatures dropped below zero. Many of his friends had moved into apartments, but he had still not found housing or employment.
“Nora” was hurt when she heard her neighbors protest the shelter plans in December 2022. A Latina resident of Woodlawn, and the daughter of immigrants, she was taken aback by her neighbors’ hostility to the city’s plan—neighbors whom she called “great friends…almost like family.” When the Wadsworth shelter opened, she came to welcome the new arrivals on the first bus.
However, when we spoke in the fall, she reported feeling much different. Over the course of nine months, she
told me that city officials had “made a community that was already vulnerable… more vulnerable by having 600 mostly men with nothing to do,” citing drug deals, fighting, and what appeared to be gang recruitment—issues that the neighborhood faced firsthand.
Like her neighbors, Nora had felt the sting of broken promises, from the city’s plan to repurpose the shuttered facility to city leaders’ lack of transparency about the ballooning number of people living in the building. Yet, she did not feel like this reality was inevitable; in different circumstances, the young men could have been integrated into the neighborhood, with the right resources, programming, and housing options.
“This could be a beautiful outcome,” Nora told me at the end of our interview, alluding to the possibility that things could have been different. She wanted community input in decisions about the shelter and more daily programming for newly arrived residents.
“Julie,” a Woodlawn resident of twenty-two years, shared her neighbors’ frustrations.
“The last thirty years, people have experienced this time and time and time and time and time again, of just them [city leaders] making decisions for them and not incorporating [residents] in any type of decisions or talking to them about what they need,” she said. “And this was just the final straw. It had to do with politics. It didn’t have to do with the migrants. It’s like, you have to stop doing this to us.”
Julie could not believe how city leaders handled the shelter, and she felt that they had willfully ignored residents’ concerns, which had often come to fruition and hurt Woodlawn residents and new arrivals alike. “I said, someone’s going to die. Someone’s going to die. And then, and then what? Are you going to shut down the shelter? Would that be enough? If you have blood on your hands? Sure enough, they found a Hispanic male, dead on 65th and University.”
Julie did not want Chicago to revoke its sanctuary city status. Neither did Nora, Nicole or Sylvie. But they did want transparency and a genuine
acknowledgement that the city had discounted their input when deciding where and how to house new neighbors.
They had felt disrespected even before the shelter opened, and they continued to raise concerns about the shelter’s living conditions. Oftentimes, they had seen their predictions come to fruition. The city’s decision about the Wadsworth shelter reminded South Side residents that old habits die hard.
Not only did residents lack control over the decision about Wadsworth early on during Chicago’s migrant crisis—they lacked control over succeeding narratives. The optics of Latinx immigrants in a Black neighborhood seemed to shatter the image that Chicago is a welcoming city. Now that the decision to manage the Wadsworth building was intertwined with Chicago’s sanctuary politics, Woodlawn residents’ protests were coded not as a fight for neighborhood resources that could also still house migrants in the long-term, but a fight against the Latinx migrants themselves.
To live in a sanctuary city means to live in a city that reckons with why a schoolyard is vacant in the first place, and why it is the first place that municipal leaders look when the city welcomes new neighbors. Tensions in Woodlawn and other Chicago neighborhoods do exist—but the solution is not simply to remind people what they have in common. Calls for intergroup solidarity require policymakers and organizers to acknowledge the particular memories that communities carry with them, and that what is “cost-effective” and “politically expedient” in crises often re-entrench social inequalities. Anger about the Wadsworth shelter reveals less about “inherent tensions” or a politics of unwelcoming, and more about what it means to be a sanctuary city that serves all.
In the past month, Chicago’s mayoral administration announced a citywide transition to the One Shelter Initiative, a plan to merge the homeless and migrant shelter systems under one structure. The transition serves as an acknowledgement that the “migrant crisis” revealed longstanding systemic gaps in services
for Chicago’s homeless community. Meanwhile, America’s next presidential administration will continue to characterize recently arrived immigrants as the source of community frustrations, in hopes that people point fingers at one another rather than demanding accountability and investment from all levels of government.
Epilogue: Vacant Again
Six months after my interview with Julie, the city announced that it would “decompress” the Wadsworth shelter. Throughout the first week of May, the people living at Wadsworth received lists of bed numbers every night. Those on the list would have to relocate to an assigned shelter the next morning.
“Hector,” an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was one of the last residents to leave. He had arrived in Chicago in December 2023 and lived at Wadsworth since January. Midway through the first week of May, he received notice that he would need to board another bus, bound for a shelter downtown.
The weekend before he left, Hector asked me to keep a few of his bags for safekeeping. He worried about being able to transport his belongings between temporary housing. Over the next four months, he would be shuffled between two more singles shelters.
A few days after Hector’s departure, the school grounds were once again vacant.
This piece is an adapted version of a yearlong thesis project. The full paper is available on request. ¬
Maggie Rivera is a lifelong Chicagoan, an avid writer, and a big sister. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2024 and currently works as a Community Integration Coordinator with New Life Centers.
Shelter Contractor ‘Failed’ Clients as Complaints Mounted, Staffers Say
Chicago is phasing out Favorite Healthcare Staffing after paying the agency $342 million to oversee its shelters.
BY EMELINE POSNER, INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT ON RACE AND EQUITY, BORDERLESS MAGAZINE
This story was a collaboration between the Investigative Project on Race and Equity and Borderless Magazine.
Reina Isabel Jerez Garcia filed a grievance with the City of Chicago last fall when staff started serving smaller meals at the City-funded migrant shelter where she and her teenage son were staying.
Dinner was a scoop of rice and a couple of pieces of meat at the Super 8, a compact motel building on the far North Side. The City’s main shelter contractor, Kansas City-based Favorite Healthcare Staffing, opened the shelter at the Super 8 in July 2023.
Other changes at the shelter worried Jerez, forty, a lawyer and advocate for the rights of victims of violence in Colombia. Amid increasing threats from guerilla groups, she and her family left the city of Cúcuta to seek asylum in early 2023.
She said shelter staff, who worked for Favorite, wouldn’t let anyone, even kids, take more than two bottles of water a day. Staff were also blocking residents from bringing in donations of winter clothing, though the temperature was dropping, and the shelter wasn’t providing any to arriving families.
“The treatment was terrible,” Jerez said. As she and her son, then sixteen, awaited the arrival of the rest of their family—Jerez’s husband, two younger sons and an adopted daughter—she organized with other residents to push back against the changes.
In grievances filed later that year, another migrant parent said that Favorite staff blamed the food shortage on the
City. “I don’t believe that the government told them to only give us a spoonful of rice,” the resident wrote in Spanish in a December 2023 grievance, adding that workers treated residents with hostility.
“Enough with the xenophobia.”
Parents at the Super 8 filed twelve grievances between August and December 2023, most alleging misconduct by the shelter manager, a Favorite contractor. They urged City officials to intervene. But Jerez said she and her neighbors never heard back about their complaints.
Over the last two years, the City of Chicago built an unprecedented shelter system to provide safe, temporary lodging and resettlement resources to incoming migrants like Jerez and her family.
But as complaints against shelter staff poured in, the City passed off much of the work of overseeing that system to Favorite contractors, according to a review of hundreds of pages of public records, including contracts, invoices and emails, obtained by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity and Borderless
Magazine.
The analysis of grievances filed in the last half of 2023 revealed a poorly attended system. Contractors let complaints sit for weeks or months without response and rarely recommended discipline for staff members accused of misconduct.
Migrants’ allegations against staff ranged from cruel treatment and threats of eviction to more serious charges of discrimination based on migrants’ sexuality or nationality and the denial of emergency medical care or accommodations for medical or disability needs. In some cases, staff accused of misconduct—such as the shelter manager at the Super 8—were assigned to investigate and respond and close out complaints filed against them, records show.
The Investigative Project and Borderless found that these records also included several grievances likely filed by other contracted shelter staff, who alleged that their coworkers or supervisors were enforcing shelter rules unevenly, acting inappropriately with residents, or, in one case, serving meals that had been plated with rotten chicken.
Meanwhile, in dozens of interviews with the Investigative Project and Borderless, residents and staff expressed disappointment with City oversight. Several described the shelters as a “toxic” and “hostile” environment, where people got leadership positions out of favoritism rather than experience working in resettlement services or with asylum seekers. Some said that attempts to improve conditions or report misconduct were either ignored or led to retaliation.
Reina Jerez Garcia, her husband German Median, and sons Victor Garcia, William Garcia, and Yefferson Garcia, lived in a shelter on Chicago’s far North Side run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing. Garcia said she received unacceptably small food portions and limited drinking water when she lived at the shelter. Photo by Efrain Soriano for Borderless Magazine.
“Their needs are met as far as shelter and food, but we really don’t help them,” said a former contractor, who requested anonymity because they were scared of losing future contract work opportunities. “We really don’t. We try our best, but like, there’s nothing we can do for them.”At its peak in January, Chicago’s migrant shelters housed just under 15,000 residents, more than a third of them small children, according to City data. They slept on bunk beds in small motel rooms and cots in congregate spaces in fieldhouses, former schools and industrial buildings.
The City’s reliance on Favorite to staff these shelters has come at a high cost. Since September 2022, more than $3 of every $5 spent on migrant care—roughly $342 million—has gone to Favorite for staffing and oversight.
For months, the City defended its contract with Favorite.
“Favorite is our only solution,” Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) First Deputy Commissioner Jonathan Ernst told the Tribune in August.
The following month, Mayor Brandon Johnson increased the City’s contract with the company by another $100 million.
However, shortly after, Johnson announced in late October a plan to shut down most of its migrant shelters by the end of the year while integrating 3,000 remaining beds into the City’s existing homeless shelter network. That network will accept migrants who have arrived in the United States within the last thirty days but will no longer guarantee them beds—and Favorite will be phased out as a shelter contractor, said DFSS Commissioner Brandie Knazze.
City officials have continuously praised the City’s work in caring for newly arrived migrant families over the past two years. “We fought back and showed the world just how welcoming we can be,” Johnson said at the October press conference announcing the end-ofyear shelter closures.
Before the announcement, experts called to overhaul the system and its contract with Favorite.
“It’s time for the City to step back
and evaluate the shelter system and try to figure out how to improve it,” said Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Before the announcement, she said, “there’s no reason why these contractors should just get renewed contracts over and over again without any review of the work they've already done.”
Records Denial
The City’s migrant shelter system has remained shut off from public scrutiny. Few organizations are allowed to provide services inside the shelters. Under the terms of its contract, Favorite must seek approval from the City before making public statements, and its contractors are barred from speaking to the press. City officials and Favorite spokespeople declined multiple interview requests about the grievance process but defended their efforts to improve their QR codebased grievance system since launching it in June 2023 in written responses.
“Favorite takes its role in the grievance process for its employees and new arrivals very seriously,” Favorite Senior Vice President Keenan Driver wrote in an emailed statement. “To that end, Favorite worked with the City to review and update the grievance processes at the shelters in late 2023 to ensure more rapid processing and a safe environment in the shelters for workers and residents.”
One of those late 2023 improvements was to hire two full-time Favorite contractors who would be “solely responsible” for resident grievances, according to Julie Gilling, director of advocacy and policy at DFSS. Previously, responsibility was split between “a few team members overseeing operations at new arrivals shelters,” Gilling wrote in an email response.
More recently, the average response time for grievances decreased to thirteen days, according to DFSS spokesperson Bryan Berg. In a statement, Berg wrote that the shelter grievance system is “vastly more responsive and effective in addressing the needs of our residents than it was at the inception of the mission.” Berg is no longer with DFSS.
The Investigative Project and
Borderless have been unable to independently corroborate these improvements. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which maintains grievance records, denied a public records request for more recent grievance records. That denial is under review by the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor.
Many Complaints, Little Action
The grievance data reviewed by the Investigative Project and Borderless tell a different story. DFSS employees identified themselves as responding to just twenty-nine of 244 grievances filed from the City’s migrant shelters between June 2023 and early January 2024, records show. The remainder of the grievances were marked as being resolved by an assortment of Favorite contractors, including shelter managers, site captains and project managers.
Nearly two of every three complaints identified some form of staff misconduct, WBEZ first reported.
Records show that over the sixmonth span, response to complaints was inconsistent and slow, with an average time of thirty-five days.
Favorite contractors monitoring the City’s grievance portal rarely recommended disciplinary action for staff accused of misconduct, suggesting a “corrective action” in just twenty-four of the 215 cases Favorite investigated.
One of those staff was the shelter manager of the Super 8. Migrant parents accused him and other staffers of limiting kids’ access to water, barring donations of clothing and threatening families with eviction. Records indicate that the manager closed out earlier grievances. (The Investigative Project and Borderless are not naming the manager because he could not be reached for comment.)
But in mid-December, one of the City’s newly onboarded grievance counselors—another Favorite contractor—reviewed the grievances and recommended “corrective action” for the shelter manager and the project manager for “failing to communicate with residents in a professional manner” and not ordering enough food for shelter
residents.
Only a handful of the records indicate what corrective action was recommended or who administers discipline. However, those records show incidents and discipline being handled with little or no City intervention.
One example: A mother in a family shelter in Hyde Park wrote that after she asked for a glass of milk for her young child, she was mocked by a project manager and other staff over her requests for milk and told to take off her sweater. In her grievance, she asked for help pressing charges against the staff.
An investigation by Favorite contractors found that the project manager’s actions constituted a “potential abuse of authority” and a “serious matter that cannot be ignored.” Several weeks later, according to the grievance notes, other Favorite supervisors gave those staff members a “write-up” and a “counseling” session. Records indicate the investigators called and sent several emails to the mother but did not speak with her before closing the complaint.
Favorite contractors did recommend terminating staff once in response to allegations of a staff person yelling at a child. In one other case, City officials recommended terminating a security guard over allegations in grievances that he was having a relationship with a resident in his shelter. In another case, Favorite contractors recommended that a supervisor with eight complaints be transferred to another shelter after identifying a “lack of professionalism and respect” that was “interfering” with shelter operations.
The remainder were closed without recommendations for further action.
DFSS did not respond to questions about specific grievances or disciplinary procedures. “DFSS is encouraged by the fact that shelter residents have and continue to engage with our resident grievance process,” a department spokesperson wrote in a statement. “It means the process is being clearly communicated across the system, shelter residents feel comfortable raising their concerns and feel comfortable doing so.”
But, experts say that oversight in the shelters shouldn’t be dependent on
people filing complaints. “The number of actual complaints was probably ten times that amount,” said Hallett, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “But you have a population who doesn’t speak English, who may be moving from shelter to shelter, so may not be invested in complaining about a particular shelter, who may not have the wherewithal or the time or the resources to file a complaint.”
Favorite did not respond to the Investigative Project and Borderless’s findings or specific questions about its grievance policies. “Favorite temporary staff are subject to Favorite’s internal HR policies, and Favorite temporary staff help support and implement the City’s resident grievance processes,” Driver, Favorite’s senior vice president, wrote in the emailed statement. “Favorite is committed to continuous quality improvement and is constantly reviewing its policies and procedures to enhance the resident and staff experience.”
Staff Fear Retaliation
usual caseload of more than forty families. The quarantine shift started three hours before their case management shift.
Jordan quit in October 2023.
“The way things were being handled [in the shelters] was not appropriate,” said Jordan, who previously worked in federal shelters for unaccompanied migrant children. “I had never worked under staff that was just so unqualified to be in their role.”
“Favorite just failed as a company to its client and to its staff,” a second contractor told the Investigative Project and Borderless. “Many good staff left that really wanted to make a difference, but they were pushed out.”
City Leans on Favorite
Favorite Healthcare Staffing is one of three staffing companies that has supported Chicago’s migrant response since 2022.
Grievance data released reviewed by the Investigative Project and Borderless included at least ten complaints likely to have been filed by shelter staff. Most concerned supervisors’ treatment of them or the residents under their care, records show.
For example, one grievance came from a staffer assigned to serve food, who noticed that a batch of chicken smelled rotten. A manager told staff to wear gloves and put the food out as is, the staffer alleged. “Not even to animals would we serve rotten food,” they wrote in the complaint. “Would [the project manager] eat rotten food?”
The Investigative Project and Borderless interviewed eleven current and former shelter staffers who worked for Favorite and GardaWorld about their experiences working in the shelters. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were contractually barred from talking to the press without permission or feared it could cost them future work opportunities. Most worked contracts in federal shelters for unaccompanied migrant children before taking work in Chicago.
Three said they left the job over concerns about how the shelters operated. Three other workers said their contracts were not renewed after they brought up issues they encountered with shelter operations or with coworkers.
Before the City launched its webbased grievance portal in June 2023, shelters distributed paper grievance forms to give to residents, said Jordan, a Favorite case manager who started working for the City-run shelters that January. The Investigative Project and Borderless are using a pseudonym for the worker, who asked that their name not be used out of fear of being denied future contract work in migrant shelters.
“A lot of residents would want to do grievances, and they’re like, ‘Nothing ever happened, do they even read this?’ ‘Who can we talk to?’” said Jordan. “I didn’t know how to explain that we were just stuck there, that everything would stop at the shelter manager. Nothing would proceed after that.”
The creation of a web-based portal that allowed anonymous submissions alleviated some of Jordan’s concerns about residents’ grievances.
However, the City’s grievance portal was designated for residents, not staff. DFSS’ Gilling acknowledged that staff could have filed some grievances via that portal, because it could be accessed by a readily available QR code. In an email, Gilling wrote that the “most direct and effective way” to address concerns would be to reach out to their supervisors. But Jordan said that without a formal grievance system, they and their coworkers continued to worry about grievance response and potential retaliation.
Some of the Favorite contractors working as supervisors or grievance counselors worked directly in the offices of DFSS and OEMC and were given City email addresses, records show. Jordan said that caused confusion when reporting problems. “The people that I was talking to [about issues in the shelters], I thought were from the City,” Jordan said. “But I don’t even know if I ever got to the City. We didn’t know who we were talking to.”
After submitting a complaint about poor shelter leadership, Jordan said that a supervisor told them to monitor quarantine rooms in addition to their
The City first signed a contract with Favorite in September 2022 to staff shelters for migrants, shortly after Texas officials announced that they would send asylum seekers to Chicago, among other cities.
Colorado-based Jogan Health staffed makeshift shelters in hotels across Chicago and the suburbs on behalf of the Illinois Department of Human Services starting in September 2022, records show. The company, which was founded the year before, was a subcontractor of state crisis response vendor Innovative Emergency Management.
After launching an emergency rental assistance program for asylum seekers, the state closed those shelters in April 2023. That funding “eliminat[ed] the need” for state-run shelters and staffing services, a spokesperson for IDHS said. Later that year, IDHS reversed course and announced plans to open more shelters, this time using the services of security contractor GardaWorld.
GardaWorld has previously staffed migration facilities, including federal shelters for children arriving at the border unaccompanied. Favorite has provided staff for ten immigration facilities since 2012, including federal shelters for unaccompanied minors, according to
Migrants at the Super 8 motel-turned-shelter reported a shortage of food, among other troubling conditions. The motel on the far North Side opened as a shelter in July 2023 and was run by Favorite Healthcare Staffing. Photo by Oscar Gomez for Borderless Magazine
an internal document submitted to the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights in early 2024. Jogan did not advertise shelter staffing or immigration experience and the company did not respond to requests for comment.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Favorite developed a reputation as a company that could remedy large staffing gaps in a pinch. The staffing agency signed more than $1 billion worth of contracts to staff developmental facilities, senior housing for veterans and even prisons throughout Illinois.
Both Favorite and Jogan had recent run-ins with labor and employment law, however. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor ordered Favorite to pay back more than $3 million in unpaid wages to contracted employees in Florida. In September 2022, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment issued a citation to Jogan Health for its “willful” failure to pay overtime wages totaling more than $7,000 to a contractor working at a COVID-19 vaccine site, according to public records obtained by the Investigative Project and Borderless.
As the rate of migrants sent to Chicago has fallen, the local shelter system has shrunk. Earlier this year, Favorite managed more than two dozen shelters. Now, twelve City- and statefunded shelters are hosting around 4,400 migrants, according to the most recent City data. Ten of those are operated by Favorite and three by IDHS and GardaWorld. Earlier this year, the City transitioned two shelters from Favorite to local nonprofit management. The City continues to use Favorite contractors to manage its grievance system, DFSS confirmed.
In the first half of this year, migrants at a state shelter staffed by New Life Centers and GardaWorld in Little Village submitted thirty-two unique complaints about conditions and staff conduct. One staff member also filed a grievance. That shelter closed down in early November.
The records did show the date of submission and the outcome for each complaint but not the date of closure.
However, records do show that contractors fired by Favorite were rehired by GardaWorld to work in the shelter,
which is located in a former CVS store on Pulaski Road.
One of the contractors, a Favorite security guard, was recommended to be fired in December 2023 after two complaints were filed alleging that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a resident, records show. Three months later, that security guard had a new position at the Pulaski shelter where a female resident complained that he entered her room without permission and started commenting on her physical appearance.
“Having a worker like him is scary,” the resident wrote in the grievance. Within three days the security guard was fired from the Pulaski shelter, according to the grievance file notes.
“IDHS takes the safety of all shelter residents seriously and prioritizes the dignified treatment of all,” the agency wrote in a statement. “IDHS is also constantly reviewing and evaluating its shelter policies and operations to best serve its residents and maintains open communications with the City of Chicago.”
When asked about the grievance process in state-run shelters, both IDHS and GardaWorld pointed to the City. IDHS uses the City’s grievance system, spokesperson Daisy Contreras confirmed. That means that all resident grievances from state-funded shelters also go to the Favorite contractors responsible for reviewing and responding to grievances in the City shelters. GardaWorld has no “visibility into either the grievances or the process,” a spokesperson for the company wrote.
GardaWorld did confirm that one of the two contractors rehired after dismissal from the City shelters has since been terminated. Both IDHS and GardaWorld declined to comment on specific grievances.
Life Beyond the Super 8
Reina Isabel Jerez Garcia said she never heard anything from the City or Favorite contractors about the grievances she and other parents filed at the Super 8 shelter, even after grievance counselors determined that shelter staff were
responsible for shortchanging residents on meals.
Several weeks later, in January 2024, Jerez said the shelter manager gave her and her seventeen-year-old son a week to leave Super 8. She said that staff had written her up for violating a shelter rule prohibiting parents from leaving their kids unattended. She felt that the write-up was retaliation for her role in organizing and submitting grievances. “They were throwing people out in the streets in winter,” Jerez said. “This was inhumane treatment.”
At the time, Jerez was the only support and source of income for her and her son. Her husband was still traveling toward Chicago with their two younger sons. While she waited to receive federal work authorization, she had found underthe-table work tutoring children.
“There’s a lot of legal holes,” said Benjamin Anderson, a social worker and volunteer at the Super 8. “These people are vulnerable, and their rights are not being protected, and violations against them are not being investigated.”
Anderson helped Jerez file her grievances and said he heard complaints from other residents, including one about the shelter manager stopping a parent and child in quarantine from leaving to seek medical care.
Ten months after being evicted from the Super 8, Jerez and her family are settled on the city’s far South Side. A shelter worker helped her pin down an apartment in January, and she used the state’s emergency rental program to put down three months’ rent. Her husband and two younger sons joined them earlier this year, as have her nephew and his small family.
She tried to hang on to the work she had found near the Super 8. However, in February when she traveled north to pick up her pay, her boss sent her to a new address, and a man she had never met assaulted her, she said. She filed a police report and a restraining order against the man and was too scared to return to her job.
Jerez says she hopes to build on her advocacy work in Colombia by creating an organization to support migrants here in Chicago and ensure their humane
treatment in shelters.
“They’re not overseeing them, they’re not inspecting [the shelters],” Jerez said. “I’d like to propose that the City of Chicago meets with residents in the shelters every month to ask them, ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘How are they treating you?’”
“If I knew the language, I would say this all in English, truly,” she laughs. “I have so many things to say … I’ll have to spend a year studying to prepare myself to say it all.” ¬
Contributing reporting by Jonathan Torres, Katrina Pham and Martha Contreras.
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.
Emeline Posner is an investigative reporter at the Investigative Project on Race and Equity. They have also contributed to the Weekly
NOVEMBER 16, 2024–JAN UA RY 6, 2025
Contratista municipal ‘falló’ mientras aumentaban las quejas de refugios para migrantes, según empleados
Chicago está gradualmente eliminando a Favorite Healthcare Staffing después de haber pagado $342 millones a la agencia para supervisar su sistema de refugios.
POR EMELINE POSNER, INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT ON RACE AND EQUITY, BORDERLESS MAGAZINE; TRADUCIDO POR BORDERLESS MAGAZINE
Este reportaje fue una colaboración entre el Investigative Project on Race and Equity y Borderless Magazine.
Reina Isabel Jerez García presentó una queja a la ciudad el otoño pasado, cuando el personal comenzó a servir comidas más pequeñas en el refugio financiado por la Municipalidad para migrantes donde ella y su hijo adolescente se alojaban.
La cena consistía en una cucharada de arroz y un par de trozos de carne en el Super 8, un motel compacto del extremo lado norte. El principal contratista de refugios de la ciudad, Favorite Healthcare Staffing, con sede en Kansas City, inauguró el Super 8 en julio de 2023.
Otros cambios preocupaban a Jerez, de 40 años, abogada y defensora de los derechos de las víctimas de la violencia en Colombia. Ante las crecientes amenazas de los grupos guerrilleros, abandonó la ciudad de Cúcuta con su familia para solicitar asilo a principios de 2023.
El personal del refugio, que trabajaba para Favorite, no dejaba que nadie, ni siquiera a los niños, tomara más de dos botellas de agua al día, dijo. También impedían a los residentes traer donaciones de ropa de invierno, a pesar de que la temperatura estaba bajando y el refugio no proporcionaba ninguna a las familias que llegaban, dijo.
Una fila de personas espera para entrar en el mayor refugio de migrantes de Chicago, en Pilsen, el miércoles 20 de diciembre de 2023. Este refugio se cerró a finales de septiembre.
“El trato fue terrible,” dijo Jerez. Mientras ella y su hijo, que entonces tenía 16 años, esperaban la llegada del resto de su familia —su esposo, dos hijos menores y una hija adoptiva— Jerez se organizó con otros residentes para oponerse a los cambios.
En las quejas presentadas ese mismo año, un padre migrante dijo que el personal de Favorite culpaba a la Municipalidad por la escasez de alimentos. “No creo que el gobierno les haya dicho que solo nos dieran una cucharada de arroz,” escribió un residente en español en una queja de diciembre de 2023, añadiendo que los trabajadores trataban a los residentes con hostilidad. “Ya basta de la xenofobia.”
Algunos padres que se quedaron en el Super 8 presentaron 12 quejas entre agosto y diciembre de 2023, la mayoría alegando mala conducta por parte del gerente del refugio, un contratista de Favorite. Instaron a los funcionarios municipales a intervenir. Pero Jerez dijo que ella y sus vecinos nunca
Sebastián Hidalgo para Borderless Magazine
recibieron respuesta a sus quejas.
En los últimos dos años, la Municipalidad ha construido un sistema de refugios sin precedentes para proporcionar alojamiento temporal seguro y recursos de reasentamiento a los migrantes que llegan, como Jerez y su familia.
Pero, mientras se acumulaban las quejas contra el personal de los refugios, la Municipalidad pasó gran parte del trabajo de supervisar ese sistema a los contratistas de Favorite, según muestra una revisión de cientos de páginas de registros públicos, incluidos contratos, facturas y correos electrónicos, obtenidos por el Investigative Project on Race and Equity y Borderless Magazine.
El análisis de las quejas presentadas en el último semestre de 2023 reveló un sistema desatendido. Los contratistas dejaban las quejas durante semanas o meses sin respuesta, y rara vez recomendaban medidas disciplinarias para los miembros del personal acusados de mala conducta.
Las denuncias de los migrantes contra el personal iban desde tratos crueles y amenazas de desalojo hasta acusaciones más graves, como discriminación basada en la sexualidad o nacionalidad de los migrantes, denegación de atención médica de urgencia o falta de adaptaciones para necesidades médicas o de discapacidad. En algunos casos, el personal acusado de mala conducta fue asignado para investigar, responder y cerrar las denuncias presentadas contra ellos, según muestran los registros.
El Investigative Project y Borderless descubrieron que estos registros también incluían quejas probablemente presentadas por otros empleados del refugio, quienes alegaban que sus compañeros de trabajo o supervisores aplicaban las normas del refugio de forma desigual, actuaban de manera inadecuada con los residentes o, en un caso, servían comidas que llevaban pollo podrido.
Mientras tanto, en docenas de entrevistas con el Investigative Project y Borderless, los residentes y el personal expresaron su decepción con la supervisión municipal. Varios describieron los refugios como un entorno “tóxico” y “hostil”, en el que las personas obtenían puestos de liderazgo por favoritismo más que por su experiencia en servicios de reasentamiento o en el trabajo con solicitantes de asilo. Algunos afirmaron que los intentos de
mejorar las condiciones o denunciar conductas indebidas fueron ignorados o dieron lugar a represalias.
“Sus necesidades están cubiertas en cuanto al alojamiento y la comida, pero en realidad no les ayudamos”, afirma un ex contratista, que habló bajo condición de anonimato. “Realmente no lo hacemos. Hacemos lo que podemos, pero no podemos hacer nada por ellos”.
En su punto máximo en enero, los refugios para migrantes en la ciudad albergaron a poco menos de 15,000 residentes, más de un tercio de ellos niños pequeños, según datos municipales. Dormían en literas en pequeñas habitaciones de motel y en catres en espacios congregados en casas de campo, escuelas cerradas y edificios industriales.
La dependencia de la Municipalidad en Favorite para el personal de estos refugios ha tenido un alto costo. Desde septiembre de 2022, más de $3 de cada $5 gastados en atención a migrantes—aproximadamente $342 millones—se han destinado a la agencia para el personal y la supervisión.
Durante meses, la Municipalidad defendió su contrato con Favorite. En agosto, cuando el primer comisionado adjunto del Departamento de Servicios Familiares y de Apoyo (DFSS), Jonathan Ernst, le dijo al Chicago Tribune: “Favorite es nuestra única solución”. Al mes siguiente, el alcalde de Chicago, Brandon Johnson, aumentó el contrato con la empresa en otros $100 millones.
Pero poco después, Johnson anunció a finales de octubre un plan para cerrar la mayoría de sus refugios para migrantes a finales de año, al tiempo que integraba las 3,000 camas restantes en la red existente de albergues para personas sin hogar de la ciudad. Esa red aceptará a los migrantes que hayan llegado a Estados Unidos en los últimos 30 días, pero ya no les garantizará camas, y Favorite se retirará gradualmente como contratista de refugios, dijo la Comisaria del Departamento de Servicios Familiares y de Apoyo (DFSS), Brandie Knazze.
Las autoridades han seguido elogiando la labor realizada por la alcaldía en los últimos dos años al atender a las familias recién llegadas. “Nos hemos defendido y demostrado al mundo lo acogedores
que podemos ser”, dijo Johnson en la conferencia de prensa cuando anunció el cierre de refugios a finales de año.
Antes del anuncio, los expertos pidieron revisar el sistema y su contrato con Favorite.
"Es hora de que la ciudad dé un paso atrás, y evalúe el sistema de refugios e intente averiguar cómo mejorarlo", dijo Nicole Hallett, directora de la Clínica de Derechos de los Inmigrantes de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Chicago. Antes del anuncio, dijo: "No hay razón para que a estos contratistas se les renueven los contratos una y otra vez sin ninguna revisión del trabajo que ya han hecho."
Denegación de registros
El sistema de refugios ha permanecido cerrado a la crítica pública. Pocas organizaciones están autorizadas a prestar servicios dentro de los refugios. Según los términos de su contrato, Favorite debe solicitar la aprobación municipal antes de hacer declaraciones públicas y sus contratistas tienen prohibido hablar con la prensa. Funcionarios de la ciudad y portavoces de Favorite negaron múltiples solicitudes de entrevistas sobre el proceso de quejas, pero en respuestas escritas defendieron sus esfuerzos por mejorar su sistema de quejas basado en un código QR desde su lanzamiento en junio de 2023.
"Favorite toma muy en serio su papel en el proceso de quejas para sus empleados y recién llegados", escribió el vicepresidente senior de Favorite, Keenan Driver, en un comunicado enviado por correo electrónico. "Con ese fin, Favorite trabajó con la Municipalidad para revisar y actualizar los procesos de quejas en los refugios a fines de 2023 para garantizar un procesamiento más rápido y un ambiente seguro en los refugios para los trabajadores y residentes."
Uno de esos mejoramientos de finales de 2023 fue contratar a dos contratistas de Favorite a tiempo completo para ser “los únicos responsables” de las quejas de los residentes, según Julie Gilling, directora de defensa y política del DFSS. Anteriormente, la responsabilidad se dividía entre “algunos miembros del equipo que supervisaban las operaciones en los refugios de recién llegados”, escribió Gilling en una respuesta
por correo electrónico a preguntas de seguimiento.
Más recientemente, el tiempo promedio de respuesta a las quejas se ha reducido a 13 días, según el portavoz del DFSS, Bryan Berg. En un comunicado, Berg escribió que el sistema de quejas del refugio es “mucho más receptivo y eficaz para atender las necesidades de nuestros residentes de lo que era al inicio de la misión.” Berg ya no trabaja en DFSS.
El Investigative Project y Borderless no han podido corroborar independientemente estos mejoramientos. El OEMC, que mantiene los registros de quejas, negó una solicitud de registros públicos de las quejas más recientes. Esta denegación está siendo revisada por el Consejero de Acceso Público del Fiscal General.
Muchas quejas, poca acción
Los datos de quejas revisados por el Investigative Project y Borderless cuentan otra historia. Los empleados del DFSS se identificaron como responsables de solo 29 de las 244 quejas presentadas desde los refugios para migrantes de la ciudad entre junio de 2023 y principios de enero de 2024, según muestran los registros. El resto de las quejas fueron marcadas como resueltas por una variedad de contratistas de Favorite, incluidos gerentes de refugios, capitanes de sitio y gerentes de proyecto.
Casi dos de cada tres quejas identificaron alguna forma de mala conducta del personal, informó WBEZ inicialmente.
Durante los seis meses, la respuesta a las quejas fue inconsistente y lenta, según muestran los registros, con un promedio de 35 días.
Los contratistas de Favorite que supervisan el portal de quejas de la Municipalidad rara vez recomendaron medidas disciplinarias para el personal acusado de mala conducta, sugiriendo una "acción correctiva" en solo 24 de los 215 casos investigados por Favorite, que involucraron a nueve empleados del refugio.
Uno de esos empleados era el director del refugio en el motel Super 8. Los padres migrantes lo acusaron a él y a otros miembros del personal de limitar el acceso de los niños al agua, prohibir las donaciones de ropa
y amenazar a las familias con el desalojo. Los registros indican que el gerente cerró quejas anteriores. (El Investigative Project y Borderless no nombran al director porque no fue posible ponerse en contacto con él para hacer comentarios).
Pero a mediados de diciembre, uno de los nuevos asesores de quejas municipales —otro contratista de Favorite— revisó las quejas y recomendó "medidas correctivas" para el director del refugio y el director del proyecto por "no comunicarse con los residentes de manera profesional" y por no pedir suficiente comida para los residentes del refugio.
Solo unos pocos registros indican en qué consisten las medidas correctivas o quién las administra. Pero esos registros muestran que los incidentes y la disciplina se gestionan con escasa o nula intervención municipal.
Un ejemplo: una madre de un refugio familiar de Hyde Park escribió que, tras pedir un vaso de leche para su hijo pequeño, un director de proyectos y otros miembros del personal se burlaron de ella por su consumo de leche y le dijeron que se quitara el suéter. En su queja, pedía ayuda para denunciar a los empleados.
Una investigación de los contratistas de Favorite concluyó que las acciones del jefe de proyectos constituían un “posible abuso de autoridad” y un “asunto grave que no puede ignorarse”. Varias semanas después, según las notas de la queja, otros supervisores de Favorite dieron a esos miembros del personal una “reprimenda” y una sesión de “asesoramiento”. Los registros indican que los investigadores llamaron y enviaron varios correos electrónicos a la madre, pero no hablaron con ella antes de cerrar la queja.
En una ocasión, los contratistas de Favorite recomendaron el despido del personal en respuesta a las denuncias de un empleado que le gritaba a un niño. En otro caso, los funcionarios municipales recomendaron el despido de un guardia de seguridad a raíz de las denuncias de que mantenía una relación con una residente de su refugio. En otro caso, los contratistas de Favorite recomendaron que un supervisor con ocho quejas fuera trasladado a otro refugio tras detectar una “falta de profesionalidad y respeto” que estaba
“interfiriendo” en la operación del refugio.
El resto de los casos se cerraron sin recomendaciones de medidas adicionales.
El DFSS no respondió a preguntas sobre quejas concretas o procedimientos disciplinarios. "El DFSS se siente alentado por el hecho de que los residentes de los refugios se han comprometido y siguen comprometidos con nuestro proceso de quejas", escribió un portavoz del departamento en un comunicado. "Significa que el proceso está comunicado claramente por todo el sistema, que los residentes del refugio se sienten cómodos levantando sus preocupaciones y utilizando el sistema que tenemos en marcha".
Pero, los expertos dicen que la supervisión en los refugios no debería depender de que la gente presente quejas. "El número de quejas en realidad probablemente fue 10 veces esa cantidad", dijo Hallett, director de la Clínica de Derechos de los Inmigrantes. "Pero tienes una población que no habla inglés, que podría estar moviéndose de refugio a refugio, entonces puede que no esté interesada en quejarse de un refugio en particular que puede no tener ni los medios ni el tiempo ni los recursos para presentar una queja".
Favorite no respondió a las conclusiones del Investigative Project ni a las preguntas concretas de Borderless sobre su política de quejas. “El personal temporal de Favorite está sujeto a las políticas internas de RH de Favorite, y el personal temporal de Favorite ayuda a apoyar e implementar los procedimientos de quejas de los residentes de la ciudad”, escribió Driver, el vicepresidente senior, en la declaración enviada por correo electrónico. “Favorite está comprometido con el continuo mejoramiento de la calidad y constantemente revisa sus políticas y procedimientos para mejorar la experiencia de los residentes y el personal.”
El personal teme represalias
Los datos sobre quejas publicados por la Municipalidad incluían al menos 10 quejas probablemente presentadas por el personal de los refugios. La mayoría se refería al trato de los supervisores hacia ellos o a los residentes a su cargo, muestran los registros. Por ejemplo, había una queja de un
que trabajaban como supervisores o asesores de quejas trabajaban directamente en las oficinas del DFSS y la OEMC y recibían direcciones de correo electrónico municipales, según muestran los registros. Jordan dijo que eso causaba confusión. “Pensaba que las personas con las que hablaba [sobre los problemas en los refugios] eran de la Municipalidad”, dijo Jordan. “Pero ni siquiera sé si alguna vez llegué a hablar con la ciudad. No sabíamos con quién estábamos hablando”.
Tras presentar una queja sobre la mala dirección del refugio, Jordan dijo que un supervisor le dijo que vigilara las salas de cuarentena, además de su carga habitual de más de 40 familias. El turno de cuarentena empezaba tres horas antes que su turno de gestión de casos.
Renunció en octubre de 2023.
empleado encargado de servir la comida que se dio cuenta de que un montón de pollo olía a podrido. Un gerente le dijo al personal que se pusiera guantes y sirviera la comida tal cual, alegó el empleado. “Ni siquiera a los animales les serviríamos comida podrida”, escribieron en la denuncia. “¿Comería [el gerente] comida podrida?”
The Investigative Project y Borderless entrevistaron a 11 empleados y ex empleados de los centros de acogida que trabajaron para Favorite y GardaWorld sobre sus experiencias de trabajo en los refugios. Todos hablaron bajo condición de anonimato porque tienen prohibido por contrato hablar con la prensa sin permiso o temían que pudiera costarles futuras oportunidades laborales. La mayoría trabajó con contratos en refugios federales para niños migrantes no acompañados antes de aceptar trabajo en Chicago.
Tres de ellos dijeron que dejaron el trabajo porque les preocupaba la administración de los refugios. Otros tres trabajadores afirmaron que sus contratos no se renovaron después de expresar problemas con la operación de los refugios o con sus compañeros de trabajo.
Antes de que la Municipalidad lanzara su portal de quejas en línea en junio de 2023, los refugios distribuían formularios de quejas en papel para entregar a los residentes, dijo Jordan, un gestor de casos favorito que empezó a trabajar para los
refugios gestionados por la ciudad en enero. The Investigative Project y Borderless están utilizando un seudónimo para una trabajadora que pidió que no se utilizara su nombre por temor a que se le negaran futuros contratos de trabajo en albergues para migrantes.
“Muchos residentes querían presentar quejas y se preguntaban: 'Nunca [han hecho] nada, ¿acaso leen esto?' '¿Con quién podemos hablar?’” dijo Jordan. “No sabía cómo explicarles que solo estábamos atrapados allí, que todo se detendría en el gerente del refugio. Nada pasaría después de eso.”
La creación de un portal web que permitía las aportaciones anónimas alivió algunas de las preocupaciones de Jordan sobre las quejas de los residentes.
Sin embargo, el portal de quejas estaba destinado a los residentes, no al personal. Gilling, del DFSS, reconoció que el personal podría haber presentado algunas quejas a través de ese portal, ya que se podía acceder a él mediante un código QR fácilmente disponible. En un correo electrónico, Gilling escribió que la "forma más directa y eficaz" para abordar las preocupaciones sería ir con sus supervisores. Pero Jordan dijo que, sin un sistema formal de quejas, ellos y sus compañeros seguían preocupados por la respuesta a las quejas y las posibles represalias.
Algunos de los contratistas de Favorite
"La manera en que se manejaban las cosas [en los refugios] no era la adecuada. ... Nunca había trabajado con personal tan poco calificado para desempeñar su función", afirmó Jordan, quien anteriormente había trabajado en refugios federales de menores migrantes no acompañados.
"Favorite le falló como empresa a sus clientes y a su personal", dijo un segundo contratista. "Se fue mucho personal bueno que realmente quería marcar la diferencia, pero les echaron".
La ciudad se apoya en Favorite
Favorite Healthcare Staffing es una de las tres empresas de dotación de personal que ha apoyado la respuesta de Chicago a los migrantes desde 2022.
La exalcaldesa Lori Lightfoot firmó por primera vez un contrato con Favorite en septiembre de 2022, poco después de que las autoridades de Texas anunciaron que enviarán solicitantes de asilo a Chicago, entre otras ciudades.
Jogan Health, con sede en Colorado, dotó de personal a refugios improvisados en hoteles de Chicago y los suburbios en nombre del Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Illinois (IDHS) a partir de septiembre de 2022, según muestran los registros. La empresa, fundada el año anterior, era subcontratista del proveedor estatal de respuesta a crisis Innovative Emergency Management.
Tras lanzar un programa de ayuda
Reina Jerez García abraza a su marido, Germán Medina, quien, junto con sus dos hijos menores, se reunió con Reina en Chicago a principios de este año.
Efrain Soriano para Borderless Magazine.
de emergencia para la renta destinado a solicitantes de asilo, el estado cerró esos refugios en abril de 2023. Esa financiación “eliminó la necesidad” de refugios estatales y servicios de personal, dijo un portavoz de IDHS. Ese mismo año, IDHS dio marcha atrás y anunció planes para abrir más refugios, esta vez utilizando los servicios del contratista de seguridad GardaWorld. GardaWorld ya había proporcionado personal a centros de inmigrantes, incluyendo refugios federales para niños que llegan a la frontera sin acompañantes. Favorite ha proporcionado personal para 10 centros de inmigrantes desde 2012, incluidos refugios federales para menores no acompañados, según un documento interno presentado a la Comisión de Derechos de los Inmigrantes y Refugiados del Concejo Municipal a principios de 2024. Jogan no anunciaba experiencia en personal de refugios ni en inmigración y no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios. Durante la pandemia de COVID-19, Favorite desarrolló una reputación como una empresa capaz de remediar grandes escaseces de personal en un apuro. La agencia de dotación de personal firmó contratos valorados en más de mil millones de dólares para dotar de personal a centros de desarrollo, residencias de ancianos para veteranos e incluso prisiones en todo Illinois.
Sin embargo, Favorite y Jogan tuvieron choques recientes con la legislación laboral y de empleo. En 2020, el Departamento de Trabajo de EE.UU. ordenó a Favorite devolver más de $3 millones en sueldos no pagados a empleados contratados en Florida. En septiembre de 2022, el Departamento de Trabajo y Empleo de Colorado emitió una citación a Jogan Health por no pagar "intencionadamente" horas extras por un total de más de $7,000 a un contratista que trabajaba en un centro de vacunación contra el COVID-19, según muestran los registros públicos obtenidos por el Investigative Project y Borderless.
A medida que ha disminuido el número de migrantes enviados a Chicago, el sistema de refugios se ha reducido. A principios de este año, Favorite gestionaba más de dos docenas de refugios. Ahora, 12 refugios financiados por la ciudad y el Estado acogen a unos 4,400 migrantes, según los datos municipales más recientes. Diez de ellos
están gestionados por Favorite y tres por el IDHS y GardaWorld. A principios de año, la Municipalidad transfirió dos refugios de Favorite a una organización local sin ánimo de lucro. La ciudad sigue utilizando contratistas de Favorite para gestionar su sistema de quejas, confirmó el DFSS.
Los residentes de los refugios gestionados por otras empresas también han presentado quejas sobre las condiciones, según muestran los registros obtenidos por el Investigative Project y Borderless.
En el primer semestre de este año, los migrantes de un refugio estatal gestionado por New Life Centers y GardaWorld en La Villita presentaron 32 quejas únicas sobre las condiciones y la conducta del personal. Un miembro del personal también presentó una queja. Ese refugio cerró a principios de noviembre.
Los registros muestran la fecha de presentación y el resultado de cada queja, pero no la fecha de cierre.
Sin embargo, los registros muestran que los contratistas despedidos por Favorite fueron recontratados por GardaWorld para trabajar en el refugio, ubicado en una antigua tienda CVS en Pulaski Road.
En diciembre de 2023, recomendaron despedir a uno de los contratistas, un guardia de seguridad de Favorite, después de ser acusado de salir con una residente, según muestran los registros. Tres meses después, ese guardia de seguridad tenía un nuevo puesto en el refugio de Pulaski, donde una residente se quejó de que entró a su habitación sin permiso y comenzó a hacer comentarios sobre su apariencia.
"Tener un trabajador como él da miedo", escribió la residente en la queja. A los tres días, el guardia de seguridad fue despedido, según muestran las notas sobre la queja.
"El IDHS se toma muy en serio la seguridad de todos los residentes del refugio y da prioridad al trato digno de todos”, escribió la agencia en un comunicado. “IDHS también revisa y evalúa constantemente sus políticas y operaciones de refugio para servir mejor a sus residentes y mantiene una comunicación abierta con la Ciudad de Chicago".
Cuando se le preguntó sobre el proceso de quejas en los refugios estatales, tanto IDHS como GardaWorld señalaron a la Municipalidad. IDHS utiliza el sistema
de quejas municipal, confirmó la portavoz Daisy Contreras. Esto significa que todas las quejas de los residentes de los refugios financiados por el estado también van a los contratistas de Favorite responsables de revisar y responder a las quejas en los refugios de la ciudad. GardaWorld no tiene "visibilidad ni en las quejas ni en el proceso", escribió un portavoz. GardaWorld confirmó que uno de los dos contratistas recontratados tras su despido de los refugios gestionados por la Municipalidad ha sido despedido. Tanto IDHS como GardaWorld declinaron hacer comentarios sobre quejas concretas.
La vida más allá del Super 8
Reina Jerez García dijo que nunca oyó nada de la Municipalidad ni de los contratistas de Favorite sobre las quejas que ella y otros padres presentaron en el refugio en Super 8, incluso después de que los asesores de quejas determinaron que el personal del refugio era responsable de dar menores cantidades de comida a los residentes.
Varias semanas más tarde, en enero de 2024, Jerez dijo que el gerente del refugio les dio a ella y a su hijo de 17 años una semana para abandonar el Super 8. El personal la había sancionado por infringir una norma del centro que prohibía a los padres dejar a sus hijos solos, ella dijo. Sintió que era una represalia por su papel en la organización y presentación de quejas. “Echaban a la gente a la calle en invierno”, dijo Jerez. “Era un trato inhumano”.
En ese momento, Jerez era el único apoyo y fuente de ingresos para ella y su hijo. Su marido seguía viajando hacia Chicago con sus dos hijos menores. Mientras esperaba a recibir una autorización federal de trabajo, había encontrado empleo informal dando clases particulares a niños. "Hay muchos vacíos legales", dijo Benjamin Anderson, trabajador social y voluntario en el Super 8. "Estas personas son vulnerables, y sus derechos no están siendo protegidos y las violaciones contra ellos no están siendo investigadas".
Anderson ayudó a Jerez a presentar sus quejas y dijo haber oído quejas de otros residentes, incluida una sobre el hecho de que el gerente impidiera a un padre y a su hijo en cuarentena salir para buscar atención médica.
Diez meses después de ser desalojada del Super 8, Jerez y su familia se han instalado en el extremo sur de la ciudad. Un trabajador del refugio la ayudó a encontrar un apartamento en enero, y ella utilizó el programa estatal de alquiler de emergencia para pagar tres meses de renta. Su marido y sus dos hijos pequeños se unieron a principios de año, al igual que su sobrino y su pequeña familia. Intentó aferrarse al trabajo que había encontrado cerca del Super 8. Pero tras sufrir una agresión sexual relacionada con el trabajo, presentó una denuncia a la policía y una orden de alejamiento y no volvió.
Jerez dice que espera añadir a su trabajo de activismo en Colombia para crear una organización que apoye a los migrantes aquí en Chicago y garantice un trato humano en los refugios.
"No supervisan [los refugios], no los inspeccionan", afirma Jerez. “Me gustaría proponer que la Ciudad de Chicago se reúna con los residentes en los refugios mensualmente para preguntarles: '¿Cómo se sienten?' '¿Cómo los están tratando?'".
Se ríe. "Tengo que pasarme un año estudiando inglés para poder prepararme para decirlo todo". ¬
Contribuyeron Jonathan Torres, Katrina Pham y Martha Contreras
Traducido por inteligencia artificial con ediciones de Martha Contreras y South Side Weekly
Esta investigación tiene el apoyo del DataDriven Reporting Project. El Data-Driven Reporting Project está financiado por la Google News Initiative en colaboración con la Northwestern University | Medill.
Emeline Posner es una reportera de investigación del Proyecto de Investigación sobre Raza y Equidad. También ha contribuido al Weekly
Public Meetings Report
A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.
BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS
September 18
At its meeting, the Cook County Board of Commissioners Workforce, Housing & Community Development Committee approved its first agenda item, a quarterly analysis of the Bureau of Human Resources timeline presented by the bureau’s chief, Velisha Haddox. The report shows the amount of time it takes to fill vacant positions. The main consideration and discussion topic, however, was the second agenda item: “A Resolution for a Hearing on the Creation of a Property Tax Relief Fund.” Community members and representatives of community organizations aired their views. “I don't want to get kicked out of my neighborhood. I don’t want to stop going to the church of my choice," said Albany Park resident Diane Limas, “I don’t want to leave. If my property tax continues to go up and my income stays the same, I’ll have to leave.” Tonya Trice, executive director of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce and the South Shore Community Development Corporation, said, “Recent years escalating property taxes have posed a significant challenge. The situation threatens our ability to maintain stable homes and achieve the American dream of homeownership.” Ivy Ellis, executive director of the Northwest Home Equity Insurance Program, asked how innovative financial tools might be leveraged to support seniors. “While many in this demographic [of seniors] have paid off their homes, tax increases pose a substantial burden,” she said. Aisha Butler, CEO of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) said, “I’ve seen my taxes go up. When I first purchased twenty-seven percent of us were homeowners. Now we’re down to twentythree percent.” Committee Chair Bridget Gainer ended the meeting, describing Cook County taxation as “a deeply dysfunctional system [with] disproportionate impact on low income communities.”
October 17
“How can this project be the best for me if I don’t even know what it looks like?” asked Harvey resident Sharron McGee as she questioned a stormwater retention pond that would require some residents to relocate. She was speaking at a meeting of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Board of Commissioners (MWRD). Some residents of the south suburb are resisting an MWRD program to buy out homeowners in flood-prone areas to create a stormwater retention pond. The Harvey Central Park Stormwater Detention Basin project is a $9.8 million effort to reduce flooding along Myrtle Avenue between 153rd and 154th streets, according to the district. Officials say it will help protect 209 homes in the area. MWRD Board President Kari Steele said that she considers the project a form of environmental justice. But the project also means that fifteen homeowners would have to move to make the land available for the project. At least one objected that the
rationale and financial incentive are not enough to make them leave the homes that have been in their family for fifty-two years, according to the Daily Southtown. Other residents commented that the project is mainly displacing Black seniors. The MWRD is charged with treating wastewater and managing stormwater for Chicago and 128 suburbs.
October 28
At its meeting, members of the City Council Committee on Finance voted to pay more than $4.5 million to settle four police misconduct lawsuits and heard public comments on two planned projects. Three payouts were approved for $400,000, $325,000, and $225,000. The largest payout—$4 million—was to the estate of Lee Harris, sixty-eight. Harris spent thirty-three years in prison for his wrongful conviction in the 1989 murder of twenty-eight-year-old Dana Feitler. He was exonerated and released in 2023, dying eight months later. Members also heard public comments about issuing tax-exempt bonds and providing other financial assistance totaling no more than $19,175,000 for an affordable housing development at 905 S. Exchange Avenue by developer Thrive Exchange, LLC.
October 29
At its meeting, the City Council Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development learned that the former site of the U.S. Steel South Works plant on the Southeast Side could be transformed into a cutting-edge technology facility. Tim Jeffries, managing deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Bureau of Economic Development, told the committee that the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is a rare opportunity to support economic recovery and other opportunities for the Southeast Side. The park is only a “framework” without a site plan, Jeffries said, but could generate some $200 million in tax revenue over thirty years. Some community members urged the committee to put this project on a slower track to allow more time for discussion. They are concerned about environmental remediation and impact as well as ensuring economic benefits for local residents. Daniel La Spata (1st Ward) likened the project to “a deleted scene from ‘Terminator 2,’ commenting that “it’s an incredible thing to talk about this land, the generations that have history here, the technology we’re discussing.” The original plant opened in 1882, closing 110 years later in 1992. At one time it had employed 20,000 workers and produced steel to build Pullman railroad cars and the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower). The land has remained vacant since the plant’s closing.
October 29
Chicago’s newest urban farms could be inside the Loop’s skyscrapers. At their meeting, members of the City Council Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards voted to allow buildings in the Central Business District to house indoor agricultural facilities. With many downtown office buildings still vacant or underutilized since the COVID-19 pandemic, developers and city officials have looked for creative solutions to fill these spaces, such as incentivizing affordable housing conversions on LaSalle Street. An indoor urban farm is a low-impact use that allows older buildings to compete with newer developments, said Council Member Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), and uses less energy and water than a residential floor of the same size. From here, the municipal code change goes to a full Council vote.
This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.
illustration by Holley Appold/South Side Weekly
Trump’s Return Sparks Anxiety Among Chicago Immigrants
Immigrant-led coalitions provide support amid fears of mass deportations and violence.
BY ALMA CAMPOS, MINDSITE NEWS
This story, which was published online before the election, is the second part of a new reporting project called Silent Battles, which focuses on the mental health of immigrant, refugee and asylum communities in the U.S. It is a collaboration between the Chicago bureau of MindSite News and palabra, a multimedia platform from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
In the aftermath of the Presidential election, Chicago’s Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health held a conference to begin the process of planning ways that mental health providers and community allies can support the mental wellbeing of immigrants and new arrivals as they confront mass deportation and other threats. MindSite News, palabra and South Side Weekly will bring you a report on that meeting in the coming days, as part of our continuing coverage of this critical issue — so stay tuned.
We have begun this project in Chicago, a city founded by a Haitian immigrant that has the fourth-largest immigrant population in the country. This story may contain scenes or references that could be triggering to people impacted by trauma. If you or someone you know need mental health support please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Crisis counselors are available in English and Spanish, as well as for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Justtwo days after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, mental health advocates in Chicago gathered to discuss concerns about the election’s impact on immigrants’ mental health. The meeting ultimately led them to found the Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health, a network of organizations united in providing mental health support
for immigrant residents of the city who do not have legal documents.
One of the founders, Maria Ferrera, an associate professor of social work and critical ethnic studies at DePaul University, recalls that she and many other mental health advocates were deeply worried about immigrants who were terrified by the rhetoric coming from Trump, and they decided to join forces to help them. “I don’t think any one of us really expected Trump to win,” she said.
Fast forward eight years, and those fears are exploding all over again. At a rally in New York City in late October, Trump vowed to initiate “the largest deportation program in American history” on his first day in office and pledged to “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.”
In Chicago, the high stress and anxiety migrants have experienced after Trump’s
unrelenting attacks—especially during the current presidential campaign—have so eroded their mental health that some report a sense of desperation and hopelessness they can’t shake, even with the support of loved ones. Demoralized by the barrage of threats and insults, others are turning to alcohol for the first time. Some, including Chicago resident Ana Pérez, say they are haunted by suicidal thoughts.
Pérez (who is using a pseudonym for fear of being deported if identified) lives in La Villita, or Little Village, a Chicago neighborhood that is a soughtafter destination in the Midwest for many Mexican immigrants. Little Village is a bustling neighborhood with traditional Mexican bakeries, family-owned restaurants, a thriving arts community and more than 500 locally-owned businesses contributing $900 million per year to Chicago’s economy. Pérez and her family
are among the nearly 67,000 Latinos in the neighborhood, who make up nearly 82% of all the residents in Little Village. Of those Latino residents, 28,000 are from Mexico.
Pérez immigrated from Guerréro, Mexico as a newlywed to build a new life, but now she is plagued by constant worry. Her mental health has suffered, she said, from Trump’s attacks on immigrants and his threats of mass deportation and internment camps. “It affects me a lot,” said Perez, who added that she has reached the point where she has contemplated suicide “so as not to feel and not to see everything that is coming.” She is seeing a therapist to help her get through this dark time.
With Trump winning the election, she believes her life will be even more difficult than it was after his victory in 2016. “He comes with more force,” she said. “I believe that now he has a lot of support. The people are raising him up. So, that gives him the power to say, ‘Well, I can do things that before, I wouldn’t do.’”
Worries about a new rash of fear and despair
Young Latinx immigrants may be especially vulnerable. The fear and despair sown by Trump’s rhetoric and the threat of largescale deportations during his presidency, and now, have already resulted in suicide attempts and a sharp rise in suicide-related thoughts among immigrant youth, which deeply alarmed Ferrera. Immediately after Trump’s election in 2016, the phone lines at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline lit up in an unprecedented surge of calls from young people.
On November 10, 2016, two days after Trump’s victory, Ferrera and about twenty-five professionals from mental health agencies gathered in a conference
A Little Village resident with an “I Voted” sticker outside a neighborhood voting center on October 19, 2024.
Photo: Photo: Sebastián Hidalgo for palabra/MindSite News
IMMIGRATION
room at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, where they shared stories of distress calls they were receiving from immigrant families and youth. Some were in the U.S. thanks to DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a U.S. immigration policy enacted in 2012 that protects eligible undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children from deportation.
“The level of stress was just uncharted,” Ferrera said. “Within two days we were hearing about DACA youth committing suicide. So you can imagine what Trump represents.”
Now, immigrants worry that Trump’s return to the White House will be followed by family separation and the kinds of immigration policies and inflammatory rhetoric that marked his previous term. Trump has announced that he will also seek to use the military, including the National Guard, to round up and deport up to 20 million undocumented immigrants and enforce harsher border policies. He has called migrants “animals,” “stone cold killers,” “the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within” and has made numerous false claims about people from other countries, including repeating a social media lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats.
Trump’s verbal attacks on migrants are so unhinged that the online media outlet Politico has described his rants on the campaign trail as racist and xenophobic, adding that they increasingly feature “what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.”
Many migrants fear the fragile sanctuary they’ve built through years of grueling work in the shadows—a stable home, a better life for their children—will evaporate in the coming years.
Children gripped by fear
Speaking from the two-bedroom apartment that she shares with her husband, two daughters aged seventeen and twentythree, and her seven-year-old grandson, Pérez explained that her husband works as a car mechanic while she takes care of the family. Since the couple has not been able to obtain immigration documents, she said they are in constant fear of deportation, and it has also prevented them from buying
a house, worried that if both she and her husband were deported, their daughters would be left with the burden of paying for it.
Her youngest daughter struggles with similar fears and anxiety. She has a difficult time sleeping, Pérez said, and frequently asks if there’s a plan in place in case her parents are deported. “She suffers a lot, poor child, because she goes to bed thinking (after) watching the news, ‘What is happening? Who is winning?” Pérez said.
Eight years ago, Chicago nonprofits and coalitions that support immigrants mobilized quickly to respond to Trump’s election, organizing to strengthen immigrant mental health. Today, in 2024, they are working to counter Trump’s increasingly dark anti-immigrant rhetoric and bring a sense of hope to the beleaguered community—even as Trump’s reelection boosts anxiety among immigrants, especially those without documents and new arrivals, as they brace for potential attacks on their wellbeing and safety.
After the 2016 election, Ferrera felt compelled to act in response to the fear and anxiety that overwhelmed many immigrants. At that time, she was already teaching at DePaul University and was also involved in community-based research with students without legal status as part of Youth Health Service Corps, a youthempowering health program in Chicago. The program was headed by Centro Sin Fronteras, an organization founded in Chicago by Lincoln United Methodist
Church pastor and prominent civil rights activist Emma Lozano.
“I was listening to them and their stories. So I knew. I had a sense of how much they were impacted,” Ferrera said. She recalled a high school student in a red state who was living in the U.S. without legal documentation. He felt deeply unsafe when his school celebrated Trump’s election. “He was afraid of what [Trump] was going to do. He knew he was in trouble. He knew he was vulnerable in a place where, if people knew about his status, he would be in trouble,” said Ferrera. The student ended up leaving the school and the family relocated to Chicago.
Flor Ramirez, who is a community navigator at Arise Chicago, a nonprofit focused on addressing workplace injustices through education, organizing, and policy advocacy, recalls that time.
“It was a collective fear,” she said. “It was a fear that cut through our family. I had to talk to my bishop, to tell him that if I got deported, if I could please leave him a notarized letter that he would take care of my children, because my biggest fear at that time was that my children would be left with the human rights department and that they would be separated.”
‘Don’t say anything, don’t sign anything’
Ramirez said many people put up cameras outside their homes in case agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up, in order to
be able to spread the word to neighbors. “It was a panic,” she said.
She watched the phones twentyfour hours a day, she recalls. “We started to circulate among the community some help numbers, that if something happened to you, don’t say anything, don’t assume anything, don’t sign anything,” Ramirez said.
Her main concern now is for new arrivals in the workforce. Their limited understanding of their rights and of their access to resources leave them more vulnerable to exploitation since they are not yet established in the city, are hesitant to enter federal buildings, and lack the support and resources that she was able to get over the years of living in Chicago through her colleagues and her work at Arise.
“It’s going to get tougher, definitely. All the racist attacks increase with this man every time he speaks. The racist people become empowered to tell us: ‘Wetback, Mexican, go back to your country. Here we speak English.”’
At Arise Chicago, Ramirez works as a community navigator, helping undocumented immigrants obtain DALE (Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement), which provides work authorization for those who report workplace violations, wage theft, abuse or harassment. She secured one herself after her former employer failed to provide masks and protective gear during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite workers repeatedly requesting them. The work authorization encourages workers to come forward without fear of immigration-related consequences by offering temporary protection from deportation.
She adds that employers may feel emboldened to take advantage of these workers, particularly if programs like DALE—introduced under the current Biden administration—are rolled back under Trump, further augmenting people’s fear.
Employers exploit workers’ fears
Ramirez sees this rhetoric as a fear tactic used to manipulate immigrants, drawing parallels to the intimidation she faced from employers at a previous job. She recalls a former manager trying to control her and her colleagues, saying, “I know the status of many of you, but don’t worry, no, don’t
Political signs, including for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, are displayed on a street corner in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. Photo: Photo: Sebastián Hidalgo for palabra/MindSite News
worry, I will help you,” in order to keep them in a state of fear.
Having experienced harassment, wage theft and retaliation from former employers in the past, Ramirez understands what consequences a Trump presidency could bring for many immigrants who don’t have
a legal status, in the workplace and beyond.
Rocío Gómez, a post release service supervisor at Bethany Christian Services and bilingual therapist, worked with new arrivals screened for trauma as part of a program called Wraparound, which she said lost its funding earlier this year. “We
were practically the gateway to all those who came seeking political asylum and who had been traumatized.”
Gómez used to see clients who arrived in Chicago and through the state of Illinois via virtual one-on-sessions from her home to make it easy for people to access help. In her video calls online, she heard difficult stories of rape and death threats her clients received and struggles of their family members back home.
“And now with the rhetoric that political asylum is going to be more difficult to gain—well, when they begin to hear these stories…they are maybe afraid to show up to court, maybe thinking ‘they are going to deport me upon entering the building,’” she said.
‘Can I go to the store?’
Gómez noticed that many of her clients followed immigration news intently, and she believes this habit takes a toll on their mental health. She would often advise them to take a break from watching or listening to the news.
“My position was that of a therapist,” she said, “but (they would ask me,) ‘Rocío, what do you think is going to happen? Are they going to deport us? What would happen to my family? Can I go to the airport? Can I go to the store?’”
She also recalls clients telling her things like: “I feel like my head is going to explode, and my heart races uncontrollably.”
Nightmares of being separated from their loved ones followed, along with difficulties eating, and struggles with alcohol use were also common, according to Gómez. For many who hadn’t had alcohol problems before, it became an issue after arriving in the U.S.
Gómez, who also worked as a licensed substance abuse counselor in addiction centers, recalled some clients saying, “Alcohol makes me sleep, or relaxes me…I go to sleep and I am not thinking about what is going to happen.”
The fear and anxiety that the vitriol Trump is spreading could unleash antiimmigrant violence has already materialized for some communities. His false claims that immigrants spread violent crime
QUALITY HEALTHCARE STARTS WITH US.
Flor Ramirez, community navigator for Arise Chicago, does outreach work to assist workers without documents.
Photo: Photo: Sebastián Hidalgo for palabra/MindSite News
IMMIGRATION
have been repeatedly debunked by studies, including one published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. It showed that American citizens are two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, two and a half more times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes and four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes than those without documents. But when Trump repeats false claims about immigrants and crime at a rally, his followers can take matters into their own hands, as seen in the backlash that followed his lies about Haitians in Ohio.
Haitians feel the hate and the heat
Perhaps no group feels the weight of this moment more deeply than the Haitian community in the Ohio city of Springfield. Multiple bomb threats have rattled the area, sparked by Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s accusations that Haitian immigrants were involved in illegal acts, including eating neighbors’ pets. Vance even admitted to making up the stories to push a point.
Despite local leaders and residents debunking these lies, the damage has been done—escalating tensions, closing schools, and leaving a lasting impact on Haitians far beyond Ohio. In downtown Chicago, where the Haitian community is estimated to include some 30,000 to 40,000 people, dozens came together in a rally organized by the Coalition of Haitian American Organizations to denounce the claims. Despite the heavy rain, attendees listened to faith leaders, community members and alderpersons who addressed the crowd.
Haitian immigrants Yakini Ajanaku Coffy and her husband Jean Paul Coffy shared their anxieties about the possibility of Trump being elected, as well as concerns about the hateful remarks he made about their community. I spoke with them inside their car before the election while rain pounded outside.
“My wife told me, ‘If you don’t vote for Kamala Harris, it means Donald Trump wins,’” Jean Paul Coffy said, sounding resigned. He added, “I’ve done that before,” referring to his past support for the Clintons, expressing disappointment in the outcome.
Wearing a black Kamala Harris T-shirt, Yakini Ajanaku added, “At this
stage of the game, it would be just a crime to have Donald Trump back in office. You know, it’s just now we’re dealing with a narcissistic, deranged human being, and I just don’t think that that would be the most responsible thing to do.”
Although Trump’s claims of a Haitian immigrant crime wave and pet-eating have been debunked, the damage runs deep.
The psychic impact of hate
Vanessa Prosper, PhD, a psychologist and assistant professor at Boston College of Haitian descent, noted that this kind of language reactivates the trauma Haitians have endured for decades, undermining their mental health.
“It could be different responses from just feeling even more hypervigilant, even more unsafe, even more mistrustful of the American system and whether the American system truly can support them,” Prosper said. “It’s feeling like, ‘Well, I can’t count on anybody.’ It’s feeling dismissed.”
Racial trauma reactivates the pain of systemic racism, she said, and it can then manifest in different mental health symptoms, triggering intense anxiety, deep sadness, depression, and even a sense of hopelessness, leading people to withdraw.
“This loss of identity, combined with racial discrimination, leads to isolation, despair, and ongoing trauma, creating a vicious cycle of stress and re-triggered trauma,” said Prosper.
Prosper added that, like in many immigrant communities, there is a
mental health stigma among the Haitian population, and often feelings of anger or shutting down show up on the surface, while sadness lives underneath.
No word for depression
“In the Haitian Creole language, there’s no word, let’s say, for depression. It’s more culturally accepted to display anger and frustration than to display sadness. It’s also a culture where you learn that after a struggle, there’s another struggle,” Prosper said.
Prosper emphasized the importance of educating immigrants on how to recognize and respond to trauma, depression, and anxiety, while also addressing and breaking down the stigma surrounding mental illness within their communities.
“It’s challenging for the person to sit back and reflect on things like, ‘How is it that I’m feeling? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling discouraged, despair?’” Prosper said. “Because oftentimes people don’t have the luxury to sit on their feelings because they have to go to work.”
Echoing Ramirez’s concerns about newly arrived migrants, Ferrera emphasized the urgent need for expanded services, funding, and awareness for the 50,000 or so new arrivals Chicago has received since August 31, 2022. Many remain unaware of available resources due to weak connections with immigrant-serving organizations.
“Trump’s policies have had a chilling effect, and many immigrants distrust the government,” along with any systems and
people who haven’t shown signs of being an ally, she said.
Since obtaining 501c3 status in 2022, the Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health has focused on expanding its support for immigrant communities. Key efforts include updating their mental health resource directory, dispelling myths about immigrants and offering opportunities to work on advocacy and policy change.
Since 2016, they have trained nearly 500 frontline workers in trauma-informed care at migrant shelters in Chicago and fostered a network of over 700 members dedicated to supporting immigrant communities in Chicago. As they continue to grow, they are crafting a strategic plan to enhance their impact, which includes creating a community advisory board to ensure their work remains rooted in the needs and voices of those they serve.
Ferrera said that besides the need for more funding for and awareness about mental health in immigrant communities, it’s essential to create welcoming, safe environments where people feel comfortable seeking help.
“We’ve been sensitive to the fact that this just doesn’t go away,” she said. “It’s a constant fear.”
Reporting for this story was supported by the Field Foundation of Illinois and the Reva and David Logan Foundation. You can sign up to receive the MindSite newsletter at mindsitenews.org/subscribe. ¬
Alma Campos is an award-winning bilingual journalist in Chicago and is passionate about telling stories of immigrants in the U.S. Born in Mexico, her path led her from Azusa, California, to Chicago’s South Side. Her work dives into the immigrant experience, capturing stories across a range of topics from mental health and labor to community resilience. She contributes to The Guardian, is a senior editor at the Weekly, and leads reporting on the intersection of immigration and mental health for the Chicago bureau of MindSite News. Her work has also appeared in WTTW, Crain’s Chicago Business and Univision.
Community rally organized by the Coalition of Haitian American Organizations at Federal Plaza in Chicago on September 22, 2024, to support Haitians in Ohio. Photo: Alma Campos
Golden Hour featuring Steven C. Manns Jr.
Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. Thursday, November 21, 5pm–8pm. Entry is free.
Epiphany Center for the Arts is hosting this free live music performance featuring Steven C. Manns. Manns is a South Sider bassist and vocalist, and his music ranges from jazz, RnB, gospel, blues and more. Food and drink specials will also be available.
(Zoe Pharo)
Silent Book Club: Chicago Loop & South Side
So happy you’re here, 3331 S. Halsted St. Thursday, November 21, 7:30pm–9pm.
Free. bit.ly/sohappyyourehere
So Happy You’re Here, a vintage clothing arts and more shop in Bridgeport, is hosting a silent book club. BYO-tea and enjoy reading in nooks set up throughout the store. Silent reading time from 7:30pm. to 8:30pm. and quiet shopping, socializing or continued reading time from 8:30pm. to 9pm.
(Zoe Pharo)
Jazz Bridge no. 2.11
Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St. Friday, November 22, 7pm.
Free. bit.ly/jazzbridgeLC
The Logan Center for the Arts, the France Chicago Center and the Department of Music at the University of Chicago will present an experimental jazz performance by Chicago-based musicians Greg Ward and Isaiah Spencer, and French musicians Nicolas Peoc’h and Hélène Labarrière. The performance is part of the Bridge, a program which brings together French and North American musicians. The event will include complimentary food and refreshments post-performance.
(Zoe Pharo)
Citizen Workshop
NEIU El Centro, 3390 N. Avondale Ave. Saturday, November 23, 8:30am–3pm. Free.
The Illinois Department of Human Services and other organizations are holding a Citizen Workshop to help people apply for U.S. Citizenship, and also will be offering fee scholarship assistance. Help will be available in the following languages: Spanish, English, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and Marathi.
(Zoe Pharo)
Family Table: Hearth
SkyART South, 3026 E. 91st St. Friday, December 6, 6pm–8pm. bit.ly/3UGj3l1
Join SkyART for this interactive dinner and performance featuring a collaborative shared soup created by two local chefs. It will pay homage to SkyART’s newly imagined mobile food cart, and the “resourcefulness and sustainability” of soup, “transforming what might otherwise be wasted into a nourishing meal.” The series highlights themes of social justice and community reclamation, through the experience of both service and consumption. (Zoe Pharo)
Green Light for Change: A Community Forum on Traffic Stop Reform
The Front Porch, 1130 W. 51st St. Saturday, December 7, 11:30am–1pm. Free, lunch will be provided. bit.ly/3CcFzeV
In 2022, the number of Black drivers in Illinois who were stopped by police for non-moving violations and given a warning was five times more than it was in 2004. Hosted by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity and other local organizations, this event will feature a panel of local organizers and experts who have spent decades pushing for reform. Learn your rights, speak with lawyers from First Defense Legal Aid and connect with other people thinking about change and how issues with traffic stops affect our neighborhoods, and especially Black and Brown community members. (Zoe Pharo)
South Chicago Dance Theatre: Associate and Emerging Artist Showcase
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave. Saturday, December 14, 3pm–4pm. Free. bit.ly/SCDTShowcase<
Witness the talent of South Chicago Dance Theatre’s associate and emerging artists, as they take the stage for an exciting afternoon of dance. South Chicago Dance theatre is a South Side organization that blends classic and contemporary styles, as well as historic work. Prioritizing intergenerational learning and exchange, the organization’s seven core programs “utilize the arts of dance to reframe trauma narratives through creative storytelling and replace dominant cultural narratives with community narratives.” (Zoe Pharo)
