The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that it would also pay for travel assistance — and that people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government they plan to return home will be “deprioritized” for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” Secretary Kristi Noem said. “DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App.”

The department said it had already paid for a plane ticket for one migrant to return home to Honduras from Chicago and said more tickets have been booked for this week and next.

It’s a major part of Trump’s administration

Trump made immigration enforcement and the mass deportation of immigrants in the United States illegally a centerpiece of his campaign, and he is following through during the first months of his administration. But it is a costly, resource-intensive endeavor.

While the Republican administration is asking Congress for a massive increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department responsible for removing people from the country, it’s also pushing people in the country illegally to “self-deport.”

It has coupled this self-deportation push with television ads threatening action against people in the U.S. illegally and social media images showing immigration enforcement arrests and migrants being sent to a prison in El Salvador.

The Trump administration has often portrayed self-deportation as a way for migrants to preserve their ability to return to the United States someday, and the president himself suggested it on Monday while speaking to reporters at the White House. He said immigrants who “self-deport” and leave the U.S. might have a chance to return legally eventually “if they’re good people” and “love our country.”

“And if they aren’t, they won’t,” Trump said.

But Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigrants, said there’s a lot for migrants to be cautious about in the latest offer from Homeland Security.

He said it’s often worse for people to leave the country and not fight their case in immigration court, especially if they’re already in removal proceedings. He said if migrants are in removal proceedings and don’t show up in court they can automatically get a deportation order and leaving the country usually counts as abandoning many applications for relief including asylum applications.

It can be an intricate process

And Homeland Security is not indicating that it is closely coordinating with the immigration courts so that there are no repercussions for people in immigration court if they leave, he said.

“People’s immigration status is not as simple as this makes it out to be,” Reichlen-Melnick said.

He questioned where Homeland Security would get the money and the authorization to make the payments — and he suggested they are necessary because the administration can’t arrest and remove as many people as it has promised so it has to encourage people to do it on their own.

“They’re not getting their numbers,” he said.

As part of its self-deportation effort, the Trump administration has transformed an app that had been used by the Biden administration to allow nearly 1 million migrants to schedule appointments to enter the country into a tool to help migrants return home. Under the Biden administration, it was called CBP One; now it’s dubbed CBP Home.

Homeland Security said “thousands” of migrants have used the app to self-deport.

But Mark Krikorian, who heads the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration, said he doesn’t see the offer of paying people to go home as an admission that something in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda isn’t working.

Considering the millions of people who are in the country illegally, he said, it’s impossible to deport all of them so the administration has to combine its own enforcement efforts with encouraging people to go home voluntarily.

Krikorian said he supports the idea of paying migrants to leave although he questioned how it would work in reality.

“How do you make sure that they’ve actually gone home? Do you make them sign an agreement where they agree not to challenge their removal if they were to come back?” he questioned. “The execution matters, but the concept is sound.”

This has been tried before

Other countries have tried various iterations of paying migrants to return home.

There’s a reason it’s attractive to governments wanting to encourage migrants to go. It costs less to buy someone a plane ticket and some incentive money than it does to pay to find them, detain them if necessary, wait for the courts to rule on their case and then send them home.

The Department of Homeland Security said that it costs $17,121 to arrest, detain and remove someone in the U.S. illegally.

Voluntary returns also don’t require extensive government-to-government negotiations to get a country to take back its citizens, which can be a major benefit. There are a number of countries that either don’t take back their own citizens who are being returned by U.S. immigration enforcement officials or make that process challenging.

A 2011 study by the Migration Policy Institute and the European University Institute found that there were about 128 programs — often referred to as pay-to-go programs — around the world.

But the study found that, with a few exceptions such as one program to return people in the 1990s from Germany to Bosnia, these voluntary return programs generally failed at encouraging large numbers of people to go home.

It is not clear whether these programs resulted in migrants who took the payments actually staying in their home countries and not trying to emigrate again.

When it comes to the topic of immigration, students like Ashley Martinez, 18, of Aurora, know something about it first-hand.

“We read this book about someone who immigrated to the United States when he was 9, and for me this was something about not just connecting with the book but with my dad who immigrated when he was 4 years old,” Martinez said Saturday morning as students from East Aurora High School waited in Wilder Park in Aurora for the walk to Elgin to begin. “Taking this walk today is kind of like symbolically walking in both my dad and the author’s shoes.”

Shane and Sarah Gillespie, a married couple who teach at East Aurora High School, each teach sections of a course known as Survivor Literature, organized the walk to offer students the chance to experience what an author of one of the books they read in the class went through as an immigrant himself years ago.

Shane Gillespie explained that this spring, students read “Solito” by author Javier Zamora, who actually came to the school late last month and spoke to the students about his own experiences while coming to the United States.

Gillespie, who also is the coach of the boys’ and girls’ cross-country and boys track teams, said there are about 110 students enrolled in the four sections of Survivor Literature and that about 40 of them as well as more than a handful of faculty members were making the walk from Wilder Park to a place in Elgin that was over 20 miles away.

“The Survivor course has units on survivor situations like the Holocaust, Sept. 11th, things like that,” Gillespie said. “This year, one of our units was on immigration and we read ‘Solito’ and the kids really connected with it and we built this service project. We created this walk as a sort of put ourselves in Javier’s shoes sort of thing and raise some awareness for this topic that’s important to these kids.”

The book itself tells the story of Zamora as a 9-year-old who travelled to get to America.

“I was a big fan of the book. I loved how it was written. It was easy for me to read and it was very captivating,” Martinez said. “Meeting the author was really exciting. You forget they’re like normal people, so meeting him was refreshing in a way and hearing about his experience and post journey was exciting.”:

The destination for the walk on Saturday was Centro de Informacion located 23 miles away at 1885 Lin Lor Lane in Elgin.

“The Centro offers services for immigrants and that sort of thing. We did a similar project in 2018 and this is sort of modeled after that,” Gillespie said of the walk which began at 8 a.m. “We’ll have transportation back but we’re hoping to get up in Elgin sometime around 4 or 5 p.m.”

He said “one of the things that we tell the kids is that hopefully they learn some English stuff in our classes but also learn something about themselves too.”

“I think that’s what you get here – you build empathy, you build leadership skills – you build those things that are hopefully going to be useful through the end of their lives,” he said.

School nurse Kara Patrick was asked to attend in case any issues developed along the way.

“It’s good to experience something unique like this. It’s for a good cause,” Patrick said of the walk.

Kate Hala, who teaches French at the high school, said she was a big fan of the Gillespie couple “who have run this program before with the English department and it’s a wonderful experience.”

“I got the opportunity to do something with them before when an author came and it’s very impactful for the students to see someone outside of the classroom,” she said. “Educationally this is a very experiential thing. You can immerse yourself in it in a very different way, and it connects with the students in a different way.”

Student Sinclair Zackery, 17, of Aurora, said the book “Solito” was impactful to read.

“I think it brought into reality what so many have to go through because of the country that we live in,” Zackery said. “People should not have to put their lives at stake just to live a better life. I was honored that the author chose to come and share his story with us.

“As far as this walk, it’s nothing compared to what these other people have gone through but at the end I hope I’ll have a little more understanding of what they were forced to go through,” Sinclair added. “This experience and this class are definitely in my top three things I’ve experienced over my four years at East Aurora.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.

“Buenos días, mijo. Good morning,” she tells each student as they take their meal, some giving her a hug, as they walk inside to start their day. After she hands out the last bag, she grabs her broom and cleaning supplies, ready to begin her own day.

For the students, Mica, as they call her, is not just another custodian at the school. Instead, she is like a grandmother. She prompts smiles, helps tie errant shoelaces and, from time to time, wipes tears from cheeks.

Ortiz’s kindness and support for the students have not gone unnoticed. This year, she was recognized as a top 10 finalist for the Cintas Custodian of the Year Award, which honors the work and often unsung role that custodians play in students’ lives in schools across the country.

Though she didn’t win the top prize, which included $10,000 and a trip to Las Vegas, she still hopes to use the opportunity of the recognition to return to school, improve her English and one day become a school leader. 

“Estoy feliz porque nunca pensé llegar tan lejos. I’m happy because I never thought I would get this far,” Ortiz said.

Chicago Public Schools employs 2,392 custodial workers to help keep its buildings clean — a job that is often more than just scrubbing floors and wiping tables.

Ortiz has worked at Hibbard for only four years and, in that time, has become a vital part of the school community, her co-workers say. She has helped build a culture rooted in love and equity, said Hiliana León, the principal at the school. Her impact goes far beyond keeping the school clean and well-maintained; she’s built a nurturing environment for students who often share her immigrant experience.

Ortiz is a leader, León said. She is a representative of the vital, compassionate work custodians do not only across the school district, but in buildings and public spaces everywhere. Ortiz has built a team of janitors and custodians at Hibbard that keep the school clean and the students safe, León said.

“Many look towards her as a leader and now they go above and beyond, modeling the work that she does for the children,” León said.

Other custodians have begun to welcome the children the way Ortiz does, León said. Some help to distribute cones during the start and the end of the school day to guide the children and parents to keep them safe from traffic. Some janitors and custodians now join the staff lunches, where many didn’t feel welcome before, León added.

Without knowing, Ortiz created a sense of belonging for the students and custodial staff. The recognition has not only uplifted Ortiz’s confidence, but the dignity of the rest of the custodians and janitors at the school, added León.

“When we see custodians or people working in the kitchen, we think of our brown people; that is their job, but no, we need to find a way how to elevate the strengths they bring to our school and help them grow. How do we grow Mica?” León said.

Ortiz was born and raised in Guanajuato, Mexico. She loved going to school and learning new things, she recalled. After getting a degree in accounting, the extreme poverty and family turmoil spurred her to move to the United States in 1995.

She became a mom of two. Ortiz went to school to learn English and eventually got a medical assistant certificate. After leaving her abusive partner, she raised her two children mostly alone and worked long hours, she said.

She started working at Hibbard after leaving a job as a nannie and senior caretaker.

The children at Hibbard immediately gave her a sense of purpose, she said. That’s because they remind her of her own children and the time she couldn’t spend with them growing up.

“So when I see that they’re sad or I can sense something is wrong, I try to be there for them and cheer them up,” Ortiz said.

Cintas created the Custodian of the Year Award 12 years ago “to honor the essential yet often overlooked role custodians play in schools across the country,” said Christiny Betsch, from Cintas, a workwear corporation.

“Custodians are critical to maintaining clean, safe and healthy learning environments, but their contributions often go unrecognized,” Betsch said in an email.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it congratulates Ortiz for her recognition and called her an “important part of the Hibbard school community.”

Ortiz said her dream is to go back to school, learn to use the computer better and finally afford to take her family on vacation.

Her two children, now adults, no longer live in Chicago. Her daughter, 27, lives in North Carolina and is studying criminal justice; her son, 19, is in the U.S. Army stationed in El Paso, Texas.

“I’m sure they’re proud of me,” Ortiz said.

The students at Hibbard are proud and they remind Ortiz every time they can.

“When we walk the hall and we see her and she smiles at us, that brings everybody’s day up,” said John Murphy, a third grader at Hibbard. John met Ortiz in kindergarten. For him, he said, she is like a second grandmother.

“When someone is having a bad day, Mica knows that someone is having a bad day and Mica cheers them up,” John said.

For Manuel Calle, a fifth grader at Hibbard, even if Ortiz didn’t win the national honor, her presence at the school is already a privilege.

“Porque nos trata a todos con respeto y nos da mucho amor. Because she treats us with respect and gives us much love,” he said.

larodriguez@chicagotribune.com

Trump officials say they want to track down those children and ensure their safety. Many of the children came to the U.S. during surges at the border in recent years and were later placed in homes with adult sponsors, typically parents, relatives or family friends.

Migrant advocates are dubious of the Republican administration’s tactics, which include dispatching Homeland Security and FBI agents to visit the children. Trump’s zero-tolerance approach to immigrants in the U.S. illegally, which has resulted in small children being flown out of the country, has raised deep suspicion his administration may use the review to deport any sponsors or children who are not living in the country legally.

The lasting impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown on CPS students

Trump officials say the adult sponsors who took in migrant children were not always properly vetted, leaving some at risk for exploitation. The Department of Justice has indicted a man on allegations he enticed a 14-year-old girl to travel from Guatemala to the U.S. and then falsely claimed she was his sister to gain custody as her sponsor.

Trump officials will do house checks and interviews

Trump officials expect more problematic sponsors will surface as the administration conducts door knocks and interviews to check on cases in which complaints — about 65,000 of them since 2023 — have been filed. This year, about 450 cases with complaints have been referred to federal law enforcement officials, according to a senior Health and Human Services official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the review and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“We’re combing through every report, every detail — because protecting children isn’t optional,” HHS said in a social media post on X. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared to reference the review during a Cabinet meeting with Trump on Wednesday, saying his agency was trying to “find the children.”

For at least a decade, the federal government has allowed adults to apply to house migrant children who crossed the border without a parent or legal guardian. The program, however, was plagued with problems during the Democratic Biden administration years as officials struggled to process an influx of thousands of children. Federal officials failed to conduct background or address checks in some cases before placing children with sponsors. In other instances, sponsors provided plainly false identification, a federal watchdog report last year concluded.

After that report was issued, the Biden administration said it had already worked to improve the issues through “training, monitoring, technology and evaluation.”

Thousands of kids were placed with legitimate sponsors

But thousands of children were also placed with legitimate families, some of whom now fear they’ll be swept up in the Trump administration’s review and targeted for deportation, said Mary Miller Flowers, the policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

The center is assigned to work with some of the most vulnerable children who cross the border. Flowers said that many children have been placed with their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts or uncles.

In some cases, children may arrive at the border separately from their parents who already live in the U.S. and reunite with them through the program.

“Now you have a situation where the government is checking on the wellness of children and encountering their undocumented parents and deporting their parents,” Flowers said. “I don’t know what about that is good for children.”

Government has taken custody of 100 kids

So far, about 100 kids in the past two months have been removed from their sponsors and put back into custody of the federal government, typically in private shelters, according to the health department official.

In Cleveland, federal prosecutors allege that one man, who was living in the U.S. illegally, arranged for the 14-year-old girl to get a copy of his sister’s birth certificate and then coordinated her journey from Guatemala to the U.S. He claimed to be her brother, but no fingerprinting or DNA testing was done to verify his claim, according to a senior Justice Department official who could not publicly discuss details of the ongoing case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The man pleaded guilty to sexual battery of the child in Ohio state court in 2024 and was sentenced to eight years in prison, the official said. The man now faces federal charges including inducing illegal entry for financial gain and aggravated identity theft. Attorneys for the man declined to comment.

As part of the review, the Trump administration is working to identify the location of every child who has been placed with a sponsor, according to the Justice Department official. Investigators are going through suspicious sponsorship applications, like so-called “super sponsors,” who have claimed to have family relationships with, in some cases, more than a dozen unaccompanied children, the official said.

Videos and reports of armed law enforcement officers showing up to conduct wellness checks at the doorsteps of unaccompanied minors and their sponsors have surfaced from across the country.

In an emailed statement, the FBI said that it is conducting “nationwide” welfare checks because “protecting children is a critical mission,” adding that it would continue to work with its “federal, state and local partners to secure their safety and well-being.”

But advocates have raised doubts that children will open up about abuse or other concerns about their sponsors to armed law enforcement officers from federal agencies who are simultaneously executing mass deportation campaigns.

The search for kids has resulted in deportation of some adults

In Hawaii, homeland security agents have been scouring Kona for unaccompanied minors and their sponsors, with two families deported as a result and another child put back into federal custody, according to a news report from the Honolulu Civil Report. Last month, a northern Virginia attorney posted video of five federal agents visiting the home of his client, who is awaiting a green card, for a welfare check. And in Omaha, a 10-year-old who came to the U.S. unaccompanied about three years ago and was placed with his uncle was visited by armed agents in “black, tactical gear” two weeks ago, according to his attorney. He was asked a series of questions, including the status of his case and the whereabouts of his sponsor, according to his attorney Julia Cryne.

“They’re using this as a way to go after the kids,” Cryne said. Her client, she added, has recently had his application for a green card approved.

New rules make it more difficult for sponsors

The Trump administration has dramatically altered the way the sponsorship program works. It’s cut funding for the attorneys who represented the most vulnerable migrant children, leaving even toddlers or preschool aged-children with no federally-funded representation.

The administration has also rolled out a number of new rules for adults who want to sponsor a migrant child, according to guidance obtained by the Associated Press. In recent weeks, the office began requiring sponsors to submit fingerprinting, DNA testing and income verification to strengthen its screening procedures.

That could be a hurdle for many sponsors who may not have an income or might be undocumented, Flowers said. Children cannot leave federal custody until they are released to a sponsor.

“They have put in a trifecta of policies that essentially make it impossible for them to leave federal detention,” Flowers said.

Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed.

She told them some kids and parents were scared to come in for fear of getting detained and deported, and she explained the concept of the United States border to her children for the first time — that they were born in Chicago and had documents that some of their classmates might not have.

“And even then, my kids were like, ‘How is this possible? How can they be so afraid that they don’t even want to come to school? … Mommy, you always say going to school is good. How is it not good now for some friends?’” Duran remembered them asking her.

Trump’s hard-line immigration policy has taken a deep emotional toll on communities with large undocumented populations. And though attendance at the elementary school has slowly recovered in the months since Trump took office, fear and anxiety linger among parents, teachers and students at some Chicago public schools.

Data obtained by the Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that attendance rates fell at all schools across the district the week of Jan. 20, when the 47th president was sworn in. Over 50% of students attending the 10 schools that experienced the biggest attendance drops are Latino, according to enrollment data on the district’s website.

The names of the schools are being withheld at Chicago Public Schools’ request, out of concern for potential retaliation from the federal government.

While the district has taken steps to respond, parents and those working with students describe the effect of Trump’s immigration policy changes as insurmountable. It will likely have long-term effects, they say.

Students carry a heavy burden worrying about whether their parents will be swept up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, the counseling support they need to relieve their worry is spread thin, said Roy, a teacher at a South Side elementary school whose last name is not being used out of safety concerns for his students.

“We do have counselors, but they don’t speak Spanish,” he said. “That’s a resource that a lot of schools need now, especially with newcomers.”

CPS officials attributed the decline in attendance on Jan. 22, after the four-day weekend, to concerns about immigration enforcement across the city, while recognizing other factors, such as unusually cold weather, illness and transportation barriers.

In a statement, the district called conclusions derived from selective attendance data “misleading and speculative” and said the interviews with parents “do not reflect the lived experiences of the vast majority of CPS  school communities.”

“While weekly attendance rates can vary due to many routine and situational factors… these fluctuations must be viewed with appropriate context and care,” the statement said. “This type of reporting not only misrepresents the facts, but it also undermines the trust CPS has worked hard to build with historically marginalized communities.”

Emotional toll

Headlines about young U.S. citizens being deported by ICE have trickled into school settings, said Ana Espitia, a local school council member and crossing guard at an elementary school in Little Village, a neighborhood known for its strong Mexican American culture.

One migrant kindergartner has repeatedly come to school in tears, worried immigration officials might arrest his mom or dad, and that he wouldn’t see them again, Espitia said.

“A lot of times, kids use being sick as an excuse. They say they have a headache, or their stomach hurts,” Espitia said.

In some cases, students are bullying each other, saying they hope Trump will deport the other, according to Rocio Becerril, an immigration attorney who is an authorized vendor with CPS. She referenced an 11-year-old who died from suicide in Texas amid deportation rumors at school.

“This anti-immigrant sentiment is (likely) coming from their parents,” Becerril surmised. “But for that information to get to them is disheartening.”

Becerril leads Know Your Rights presentations to CPS parents and said that in recent weeks, fewer people have attended those sessions.

“People just curl up and pull away,” she said. “There’s so much information out there, and there’s so much misinformation.”

Inauguration Day

Parents recounted a significant psychological effect on their kids at a Back of the Yards elementary school where two U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials tried to enter on the Friday after Trump’s inauguration. The district sparked a panic when it falsely proclaimed ICE agents had tried to enter the building.

“They’re going to deport everyone who has our skin color,” an Ecuadorian migrant student, Aaron, said to his mom, Mary, at dismissal outside the school three days later, as she quieted his nerves.

Roy, the teacher at the South Side elementary school, teaches a class of all bilingual second-grade students, many of whom stayed home the last two weeks of January, which began with Trump’s inauguration. It was unusual, he said, because before those weeks, his students had almost perfect attendance. And it coincided with standardized testing, he said.

A Tribune review of CPS attendance data at Roy’s school confirmed his account.

“It was definitely difficult for teachers to continue instruction as normal,” he said. “It’s not something that these (students) should be worried about. … They should be focused on their learning.”

There are students in his classroom from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, and he said they are “resilient.” He tries to maintain routines and positivity with their families.

The district does not track the citizenship status of its students because federal law states that all children in the United States, including immigrants, have the right to a public education.

Attendance at schools that experienced the biggest drop in the first week has steadily returned to a normal range, according to the data obtained by the Tribune.

Ongoing concerns

Outside a high school in Little Village on a recent afternoon in April, Kimberly Atencia confirmed that she kept her son home during the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency. Atencia, who is from Colombia, said the school serves a large population of migrants who arrived on buses from the southern border in August 2022.

The school had one of the highest attendance drops. It experienced a roughly 20% decline in average attendance rates between the week before and after Trump was inaugurated. The same weeks in previous years did not experience the same fluctuation, data shows.

“The numbers here have mostly returned to normal,” Atencia said. “But immigration enforcement activity in the area still sometimes makes people stay indoors.”

In April, such immigration enforcement acts included emailed notices from the Department of Homeland Security instructing migrants to leave the U.S. or “the government will find you,” numerous asylum-seekers told the Tribune.

The notices state that DHS is exercising its discretion to terminate parole, a form of legal entry that was expanded under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

They were sent to individuals, including U.S. citizens, seemingly without reason, said Nubia Willman, former deputy chief of staff and director of the Office of New Americans under ex-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The notices have caused some people to self-deport, Willman said.

“Because everyone’s situation is different, it’s important folks get a consultation from a licensed attorney or accredited representative to make sure they are making decisions based on facts,” she said.

To help families with CPS students who received notices cope with an overwhelming amount of uncertainty, Juan Carlos Ocon, the principal of a high school in Pilsen, sent an email reviewed by the Tribune to his student body on April 15, urging his school’s community to continue to “lead with empathy and support.”

“If your student or someone in your family has received this letter … please inform me immediately,” he wrote. “I will personally meet with the student/family and ensure they are connected with an attorney who can help them understand their rights and navigate the process.”

Asked for comment, Ocon did not respond.

Quelling grief and anxiety 

CPS officials said they refer families to reputable organizations that offer free or low-cost legal assistance with immigration matters. The district has a website that is regularly updated with multilingual resources.

The district is taking proactive measures to make sure schools are “safe places,” where fear is left at the door, said Bianca Ramos, senior mental health consultant at Lurie’s Children Hospital’s Center for Childhood Resilience. She partners with the CPS Office of Social Emotional Learning to lead trainings for school counselors, clinicians and other staff members who directly work with kids.

Schools reach out to parents proactively, rather than waiting for families to come to them, Ramos said. They’ve adjusted their signage and provided virtual and other more flexible scheduling options for classes.

“When we talk to kids, we make sure that they’re limiting their media exposure or speaking to trusted adults so that they can get the resources and the support that they need,” she said.

Nonprofit organizations and other groups have also stepped in, but say that more needs to be done.

Children don’t often have the language to express their anxieties, said Silvia Rodriguez Vega, author of “Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance Among Immigrant Children.”

Vega spent 10 years researching immigrant children in Arizona and California to provide accounts of children’s challenges with deportation under previous presidential administrations.

She suggested that schools provide more art-making opportunities for immigrant students. All children are naturally creative, she said, but those from low-income families often lack access to various art forms.

“Art can be literally a lifeline when they face a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, like many children currently do,” Vega said.

In January, ICE visited the apartment complex where Rossyel Ward, a migrant from Venezuela, has settled in Chicago, she said. She wasn’t home at the time, but said she heard from her neighbors, who are also migrants. She has two kids who attend an elementary school in Pilsen, and although she was terrified, she sent them to school anyway.

“I can’t pass that fear on to my children,” she said. “It would stay with them.”

Under Trump, she said, she “feels the authoritarianism in a different way” than what she experienced in Venezuela under the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

She joined a parent mentor group at her kids’ school that she said gives her strength. They reach out to other migrant families who are scared.

“You can’t really form an opinion based on the politics of the government that’s receiving you — you just have to adjust to it,” she said. “As migrants, we have to make do.”

Chicago Tribune’s Joe Mahr and Emily Hoerner contributed.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from CPS.

They had numerous concerns about the shelter at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive: whether migrants would be vaccinated and fingerprinted; how their children would be educated; the food they would eat. And many wanted to know what Chicago was doing for the large and growing homeless population that predated the migrants’ arrival.

Almost three years later, buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have stopped arriving from the more closely surveilled southern border. The city has closed down most of the facilities it scrambled to stand up to meet waves of asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela. Thousands have transitioned to permanent housing. Police stations, once overflowing with newly arrived people, are empty.

What remains is a new, merged shelter network officials have dubbed the One System Initiative, which houses anyone, from anywhere, who doesn’t have a place to go. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. They have collaborated with nonprofits to run 51 total sites across the system, city officials said.

Homeless advocates have long championed the idea of a combined system, saying it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. The first few months under the new system brought changes those advocates hailed as triumphs, including the opening of a new no-barrier emergency shelter on the Lower West Side that works as a gateway to the social service network for anyone.

Challenges remain. The number of people who need a short-term place to sleep still exceeds the 7,400 beds available in the merged systems. Some facilities are still dealing with bilingual staff shortages. Even if Chicago’s emergency shelters were perfectly equipped to meet demand, advocates say that issues with homelessness will persist unless the city addresses its inadequate supply of affordable housing. And in Kenwood, some residents are pushing back and may take legal action to try to prevent a shelter that once opened for migrants from becoming a permanent fixture in their area. 

Inside the shelters, residents and workers say there is empathy among the people staying there.

“Some come because their house burned down, others because they just arrived in the U.S. and have nowhere else to go, some are fleeing violence from places like Mexico, Venezuela, or Haiti,” said Marcos Sanchez, a Venezuelan migrant who now works at a state-funded shelter near Midway Airport. “People support each other emotionally.”

Kenwood neighborhood divide

The first waves of arriving migrants set off a swirl of activity across the city in August 2022. As arrivals picked up, thousands of volunteers organized to help people get on their feet and the city and state hurried to find shelter for the asylum-seekers, who at one point were arriving by the hundreds.

Kenwood wasn’t the only neighborhood to see heated arguments about shelters: Woodlawn on the South Side, Galewood on the Northwest Side and Pilsen, a hub for Chicago’s Mexican-American community, also became centers of intense debate about whether and how migrants should stay there.

Joy Cobbs remembered that while many residents were unhappy about plans to put migrants in hotel buildings in the 4900 block of DuSable Lake Shore Drive — surrounded by high-rise condominiums and townhouses — she and others thought the neighborhood needed to do its part with what city leaders described as a rapid response to a national emergency.

“There was an understanding in the community that this was an emergency situation and it was going to be for a limited time,” she said. “We did pitch in with blanket drives and toy drives.”

Cobbs, 53, and some of her neighbors came to find the activities around the shelter “extremely disruptive.” They cited large gatherings in nearby parks, litter, outdoor cooking, crime, smoking and drug use among their concerns.

“People can try to make us feel a certain way, say we’re intolerant,” Cobbs said. “We gave literally close to two years of tolerance.”

Cobbs is one of a group of residents who have organized Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community, which is trying to prevent the shelter from continuing to operate past July, when the city will take it over from the state. The group, led by a seven-person organizing committee, has gotten about 1,200 signatures on a petition asking legislators to oppose the shelter. 

State Rep. Curtis Tarver, who represents part of the south lakefront in the Illinois House, wrote a letter to the state and the city in late March, decrying the decision to keep the shelter open, its planned capacity of 750 people and the way the decision was communicated to residents.

State Sen. Robert Peters agrees: “750 seems pretty large.” But the Chicago Democrat said he is compelled to support the shelter.

“Hyde Park is about embracing people,” he said. “It has always been about embracing people.”

Ginni Cook shares that conviction. Cook, 83, lives a few blocks from the site and said she’d heard her neighbors’ objections but felt that “we can’t keep saying, ‘not here, not here.'”

“We’ve got to do what we can,” she said. “What if that were me?”

She thought the facility should house fewer people for the sake of safety and privacy for those living there, and supported the idea of security measures for their protection.

Peters wrote to the city and state late last month asking that the shelter’s capacity be capped at 450 people, with a promise not to expand into adjacent buildings. He requested that security cameras be installed at the mouth of the parking lot, increased sanitation service and stepped-up communication between officials and the neighborhood about how the facility is operating. 

As of Tuesday, 413 people were staying at the shelter, according to the city. Peters, who visited the facility April 15, said most of the people staying there are children. Officials have since acknowledged the letter and been “responsive” to his inquiries about operations and data, Peters said.

Reached for comment, city officials acknowledged that Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, reported a “lack of clarity” about long-term plans for the site and pointed to an update meeting held for residents in February.

Though the city said the meeting was meant to “reaffirm their commitment to supporting both shelter residents and the broader community,” members of Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community said the meeting felt like a lecture and were caught completely off guard by its outcome.

A flyer has begun to circulate in at least one of the neighborhood’s apartment buildings asking residents to help raise money for a legal challenge to the shelter.

“We must fight to maintain our property value, quality of life, and integrity of our neighborhood,” the flyer reads. “If we don’t, we will surely forget it.”

The flyer appears to seek about $7,500. An online fundraiser had raised just over $5,000 as of last week.

A learning curve

City officials hired several controversial out-of-state contractors — Favorite Healthcare Staffing and GardaWorld Federal Services — to respond to hundreds of migrants arriving in Chicago daily. But Andre Gordillo, whose nonprofit New Life Centers runs two of the shelters as part of its social service network on the South and West sides, said groups like Favorite have “packed their bags.”

These days, Gordillo, who leads New Life’s “New Vecinos” program, said the two state-funded shelters they help operate in Kenwood and in West Lawn are far less busy than when hundreds of people were arriving every day on buses. At the peak of the crisis, 189 migrants a day needed shelter in addition to the existing needs of Chicagoans, according to the city.

Now, everyone who stays in a shelter is enrolled in the city’s housing waitlist, known as the Coordinated Entry System, but officials no longer differentiate between individuals who have migrated and those who were born in the U.S. As of March, city officials said there were 128 combined — migrant and nonmigrant — requests for shelter a day.

About 75% of the people at the shelters New Life runs are migrants, Gordillo said; the rest are a wide range of nationalities from Haitians to Russians.

New Life is adjusting its support resources inside the shelter.

“There’s been a bit of a learning curve to serving their different needs and wants,” Gordillo said. “For example … instead of English classes, we’ve added Spanish classes.”

The city’s Department of Family and Support Services said in a statement to the Tribune that the initiative to combine the two systems is “an ongoing process” and that “while it is going well, there are occasional issues to work through,” such as challenges in hiring and retaining qualified staff and limited funding.

Shelter workers are required to take classes on trauma-informed case management and immigration basics, according to the city. DFSS spokeswoman Linsey Maughan said 1,008 staff at 47 agencies have completed one or more trainings as of Tuesday.

The shelters haven’t been the target of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security, Gordillo said, but both migrants and no-migrants have been invited to Know Your Rights trainings in case.

“We’ve passed around videos and communication,” he said. “If there’s a raid, there are steps to follow. There are people to call.”

Gordillo said that when a family needs a shelter placement, they can usually get it within the day.

For single people without a place to go, Sam Paler-Ponce, associate director of city policy for the Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness, said “there is still huge demand” that outstrips the availability of beds. City officials said family homelessness was more prevalent in the migrant population, and as buses from the border decline, single adult rates are rising.

Maughan said that a shelter near Midway Airport, housing hundreds of families, would reorient to serve single adults “over the coming months” to help address that demand.

‘We’re all experiencing similar uncertainty’

Nikita Thomas said she wasn’t expecting to hear Spanish at mealtimes or in the elevator to her room when she and her 6-year-old son arrived at the converted West Lawn hotel near Midway several weeks ago.

Thomas, 36, said she and her son Nakari stayed at several temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness in Indiana before they moved into the converted hotel. There, they became neighbors with the last of the tens of thousands of migrants who were bused to Chicago.

Thomas and her son live on a different floor from the asylum-seekers, but they eat meals together, she said. They use Google Translate to communicate.

“I ask them about things that I need, regular things at the shelter,” Thomas said. “But they don’t speak English, so we translate on our phones. They’re really nice.”

Nearby, Maria Muñoz, a 39-year-old woman from Venezuela’s northern mountainous region, expressed gratitude for the social workers at the shelter who have provided mental health support and helped her son enroll in school.

“We’re all experiencing similar uncertainty. Tomorrow, anything could happen,” she said.

Sanchez, the migrant who now works at the facility near Midway, said “the shelter still functions the same” no matter who is living there.

Sanchez worked in human resources for a firm and taught music at a school in his home city of Maracaibo, Venezuela. He said he left his home country with his wife and 8-year-old son because its schools and hospitals were crumbling, and he stayed at a shelter himself before joining New Life as an employee.

Everyone staying at the shelter where he works comes with a “different type of trauma,” he said, but they’ve bonded.

“It’s impressive to see how everyone interacts using signs and sounds to communicate,” he said. “I feel there’s a lot of resilience. That ability to bounce back no matter the trauma.”

Beyond shelter

Cobbs, the East Hyde Park resident who opposes the area shelter’s long-term operation, wanted to know why the city and state were spending millions on emergency shelters when “the solution for homelessness is affordable housing.”

“This is a lot of money supporting something that could be going toward permanently housing people, where they have resources and kitchens to cook,” she said.

While Mayor Brandon Johnson is floating ideas to boost the city’s supply of affordable housing, advocates warn that the city is on track to lose at least 845 units of subsidized housing this year. And at the federal level, cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development could put the city, which has seen a steady increase in its homeless population, even further back on its heels in replenishing its affordable housing stock.

Paler-Ponce, of the Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness, said all those dynamics made for a “huge uphill battle” to reduce homelessness for migrants and nonmigrants in and around Chicago.

The question, he said, is “what’s next beyond shelter. … It’s a serious need, especially in extreme weather, to get people under a roof, but it’s certainly not a permanent solution.”

Maughan said no cuts had been announced that would affect DFSS and other agencies it runs, but that the city was “actively monitoring” federal decisions that could impact funding.

An earlier version of this story used the old name for Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness. 

The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.

The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.

President Donald Trump’s administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

The emergency appeal to the high court came the same day a federal judge in Texas ruled illegal the administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law. The cases are not related.

The protections had been set to expire April 7, but U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ordered a pause on those plans. He found that the expiration threatened to severely disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and could cost billions in lost economic activity.

Chen, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, found the government hadn’t shown any harm caused by keeping the program alive.

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration that Chen’s order impermissibly interferes with the administration’s power over immigration and foreign affairs.

In addition, Sauer told the justices, people affected by ending the protected status might have other legal options to try to remain in the country because the “decision to terminate TPS is not equivalent to a final removal order.”

Congress created TPS in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.

Chuchuca, standing on a stage Thursday morning in Union Park in the West Loop, said her dad has “constant back pain from the heavy deliveries.” Her mom, she said, works as a house cleaner and cook and is “on her feet all the time while taking care of my siblings and I.” She wants to focus on finishing her degree, she said, not on her family’s livelihood. 

“President Trump, stop targeting immigrants and truck drivers like my dad. Don’t break my family apart,” she said. “Truck drivers are the backbone of America. Immigrants are the backbone of America.” 

Chuchuca was joined by thousands for the rally on May Day, a celebration with Chicago ties that commemorates the labor movement. Organized labor and activist groups called for protection of immigrants and fair wages as rain sprinkled down, carrying signs that said, “Built by immigrant hands, enjoyed by all” and “Somos el motor de este pais (We are the engine of this country).” 

The group marched to Grant Park in the afternoon, as hundreds of thousands turned out for rallies around the world, many united in anger over Trump’s agenda, including aggressive tariffs and immigration crackdowns. This year’s rally and march comes nearly 140 years after the Haymarket Affair and just over 100 days into Trump’s second term. 

“May Day celebrates what happened here, what happened on these streets,” said Don Villar, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, at a gathering of labor leaders at the Haymarket Memorial last week. “We have some old cobblestone bricks back there. If those bricks could talk, they could tell the struggle that took place here 140 years ago. And you know what? That struggle continues.”

Three days before the Haymarket Affair — in which a bomb was thrown during a Chicago labor rally that resulted in the death of eight police officers and at least four civilians — tens of thousands marched on Michigan Avenue in a campaign to reduce the customary 10- to 12-hour workday to eight hours. 

Authorities swiftly rounded up local radicals, putting eight on trial. The prosecution did not present evidence tying them directly to the throwing of the bomb. Instead, the defendants were essentially tried for their political ideologies.

“They rounded up all the labor activists, labor leaders, because they blamed them for what happened here. And what are they doing today? They are rounding people up,” Villar said. “Every day people are disappearing because they’re exercising their free speech rights.”

Organizers have said May Day signifies that “immigrant rights are human rights,” particularly in Chicago where, early into Trump’s second term, some immigrant workers stayed home from their jobs, fearing that federal agents would arrest them if they showed up to work. 

“They are even more afraid to speak up,” said Marcos Ceniceros, executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice, a group that helps workers organize for better working conditions.

One out of every six Illinois workers is an immigrant, according to the American Immigration Council. Immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission specifically make up about 5% of the state’s workforce, according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center. Immigration remains a point of strength for Trump, especially among Republicans, recent polling showed.

Ceniceros said the organization had avoided filing labor complaints with federal agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since Trump took office for fear of putting workers here without legal standing at risk. Chicago has joined other cities in suing Trump’s administration in a bid to halt the firing of federal employees.

While the feared mass-scale workplace immigration raids generally didn’t materialize, in the first few weeks of the Trump administration federal agents made more than 100 arrests in the Chicago area. The Trump administration also revoked, then reinstated, the student visas of more than 1,000 international students — including at least several dozen across Illinois.

U.S. Rep. Jesus ‘Chuy’ García said the strong showing at Thursday’s rally is the “response to the takeover of the U.S. government” and “because we know the importance of (immigrant) workers in the U.S., workers in Mexico in Canada and all over the world.” 

“We know that as workers, we create the wealth, and that because of our contributions in our labor power, that we have rights and they should be respected by everyone, including our own government,” he said. 

A number of other local politicians and labor leaders spoke at the gathering as well. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said “all work has dignity,” and that as a high school history teacher, the “only way you get a bully to stand down, is if you push him back.” 

Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya — one of the few immigrants formerly in the U.S. without legal permission to hold office in the country — said her identity is “under attack” and that “we need to make sure our communities are prioritized.” 

“We do not have a king in the United States. We do not support facism, we do not support racism,” Anaya said. “What we do every time that we are attacked is we stand up in Chicago and we fight back.”

The Associated Press contributed.

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people whom the Republican administration claims are gang members invading the United States.

“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez. But, he said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

In March, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S. He said he had special powers to deport immigrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without the usual court proceedings.

The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before in U.S. history, most recently during World War II, when it was cited to intern Japanese-Americans.

The proclamation triggered a flurry of litigation as the administration tried to ship migrants it claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law.

In North Carolina, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed it arrested four people at a county courthouse, according to local media reports, prompting the sheriff to express concerns about a lack of communication from the agency as well as about disruption to court proceedings.

Inside a courthouse in New Hampshire, a pair of agents tackled a Venezuelan man outside an elevator, flattening an older man with a cane in the process. And in Boston, an ICE agent detained a man who was on trial. A municipal court judge held the agent in contempt over the arrest, but the order was later overturned by a federal judge.

The flurry of immigration enforcement at courthouses around the country in the past month — already heavily criticized by judicial officials and lawyers — has renewed a legal battle from President Donald Trump’s first term as advocates fear people might avoid coming to court.

It’s drawing further attention with last Friday’s arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin. The FBI arrested Dugan on charges that she tried to help a defendant evade waiting federal agents by letting him leave her courtroom through a jury door.

“Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law and they are not, and we’re sending a very strong message today,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said during an appearance on Fox News after the arrest.

History of ICE’s arrest practices

Lena Graber, senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told The Associated Press that she’s aware of at least a dozen recent immigration arrests at courthouses around the country.

“The historical context is really important,” Graber said. “This is something that was not part of ICE’s practice until the first Trump administration, and people were shocked.”

ICE long had a general practice of not arresting people at certain locations, including schools, hospitals, courthouses and churches. But during the first Trump administration, the agency adopted a policy explicitly allowing courthouse arrests of “specific, targeted aliens,” arguing that it was especially important in “sanctuary” jurisdictions where officials do not notify the agency before releasing immigrants facing deportation cases.

Courthouse immigration arrests jumped, drawing condemnation from judicial officials and legal organizations, as well as lawsuits from some states and the adoption of bills seeking to block the practice.

Dugan’s case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge who was accused of helping a man sneak out a back door of a courthouse to evade a waiting immigration officer. A judge in Oregon faced similar allegations — though not an arrest or criminal charges — in 2017.

The chief justices of some states, including California and Washington, asked ICE to stop, saying fear of arrest would keep crime victims and witnesses from showing up in court. In one well-publicized case, agents in Texas arrested a woman while she was obtaining a protection order against an alleged abuser.

The Biden administration imposed restrictions on courthouse immigration arrests, but they were quickly undone when Trump returned to office this year.

Under guidance issued Jan. 21, ICE officials are allowed to carry out immigration enforcement in or near courthouses if they believe someone they’re trying to find will be there. Whenever possible, the agents are supposed to make arrests in nonpublic areas, to coordinate with courthouse security and to avoid disrupting court operations.

Virginia prosecutor promises to investigate court arrest

Teodoro Dominguez Rodriguez, identified by ICE as a Honduran national, was confronted and arrested by immigration enforcement officers after he left a Charlottesville courtroom April 22. It was the second immigration arrest at the court that day.

The first wasn’t recorded, but as word spread, Nick Reppucci, who heads the public defender’s office there, scrambled staff to the courthouse. They captured Dominguez Rodriguez’s arrest on camera.

The three agents, one in a balaclava-style ski mask, ignored demands from observers to show badges or a warrant, the video shows. One agent threatened to have the U.S. attorney’s office prosecute two women who tried to place themselves between the agents and Dominguez Rodriguez.

Sherriff Chan Bryant confirmed that the agents had shown badges and paperwork to a bailiff beforehand. But Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley criticized the officers for failing to identify themselves while making the arrest.

“Bystanders, or the person being arrested, might have violently resisted what on its face appeared to be an unlawful assault and abduction,” Hingeley said in an emailed statement.

Reppucci decried the “normalization happening here, where federal law enforcement are at this point grabbing people without being required to show that person any form of identification.”

In a written statement, ICE stood behind the actions of the officers, “who are trained to assess and prosecute apprehensions in a manner that best ensures operational success and public safety.”

The Associated Press was unable to locate relatives who might speak on Dominguez Rodriguez’s behalf, and it was not clear if he had an attorney representing him.

Repucci stressed the impact arrests like Dominguez Rodriguez’s could have on people coming to court, a place he said is supposed to be where “disputes are resolved in an orderly, peaceful manner.”

“People in divorce proceedings, people with civil disputes, custody hearings, potential witnesses, all are going to be less likely to come to court,” he said.

Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.