CHICAGO -- On a recent sunny afternoon in Chicago's Woodlawn area, more than a dozen men from Venezuela gathered in a parking lot outside a shuttered elementary school that is now a shelter for migrants, kicking a soccer ball and blaring music from cars.
Jeisson Gutierrez Rojas, 27, sat on a bench and scrolled through his phone. Wearing a bucket hat and black blazer, he said he fled his home country after being imprisoned by Venezuelan political forces.
“All things considered, we’re really doing OK,” he told the Tribune in Spanish. “We have a roof over our heads and a bed. A place to shower.”
