CHICAGO — A group of more than 100 migrants arrived in Chicago Wednesday afternoon from the Texas border, city officials confirmed.
The two buses carrying 103 people were the third group to arrive in the last week to Chicago’s Union Station. One week ago Wednesday the first group arrived, while a second wave rolled in by bus on Sunday.
At the station, city staff and volunteers explained to the migrants where they were and where they would go next, said Erendira Rendon, vice president of Immigrant Justice at The Resurrection Project.
As of about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, migrants had pulled up at the Salvation Army Freedom Center in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, where they would be processed and be offered to see a doctor with Cook County Health if they need it, Rendon said.
People would also have the chance to shower, eat and rest before members with Catholic Charities organization meet with them Thursday to figure out if people want to go to a different city and provide assistance to get them there, Rendon said.
By 7:30 p.m., Yorley Torres, 32, chatted with a Tribune reporter as she stood with a group of migrants outside van at the end of a dead end street near the freedom center facility where members of a car club passed out donated clothes, shoes and hygiene products.
After gathering the clothes for her children and herself, Torres spoke with other women and men in the group while her 9-year-old son, Gregory Rangel Torres, played catch with another migrant and now friend, Alberto Zamborano, 36.
Yorley Torres traveled with her husband, her 18-year-old brother and her three children for two months from Venezuela to the U.S. Most of the group arrived in Chicago eight days ago, with the first large wave of migrants, she said, but she’s still waiting to be reunited with her oldest son, who is 16.
Just before reaching the U.S. border, Torres and the two youngest children were separated from the two men and from her 16-year-old.
Because the 16-year-old, William Mantilla Torres, doesn’t share a last name with her husband, he was pulled away from the two men in Texas and is now stuck in a shelter in San Antonio, Torres said.
Torres bounced her leg, seemingly stressed or nervous, as she spoke with a Tribune reporter Wednesday night as the remaining sunlight faded. She said she speaks to her son 10 minutes a day, and social workers in Chicago had her fill out paperwork on Wednesday and told her she’d be with her son as soon as they sort things out.
“They said something about a possible DNA test,” she said in Spanish.
While in a shelter in Texas, officials wouldn’t reunite her with her son, she said.
“It’s been two long, difficult months,” Torres said. “And now this is happening with my son.”
She said her son has asthma but had not suffered an asthma attack for three years. He’s suffered two attacks in the 13 days he’s been at the San Antonio shelter, she said.
Torres said she hopes her family can have a better quality of life in the U.S., and she would like to give her children a better future and better education.
“There’s no food, there’s nothing out there (in Venezuela),” she said.
“Before the children are without an education, or die of hunger, or they get sick and die, we’d rather flee our country.”
Around the same time, Paul Villamizar, 40, stretched out by the gate outside the Salvation Army’s Freedom Center. He’d been in Chicago three hours and was able to shower and eat.
Villamizar traveled with a group of friends, spending two months and four days to get from Venezuela to Chicago walking most of the trip to the U.S./Mexico border, he said.
He said the trip was especially difficult in Colombia and Panama, where he and others were robbed at gunpoint in Darien, Panama.
The trip north got easier after Panama, Villamizar said. People started helping more, especially once they reached Mexico, he said.
In Texas, they found refuge in a church where people helped him with transportation, Villamizar said.
In Venezuela, Villamizar was a master builder, working in construction but with certifications as a machine operator, in soldering, horseshoeing and loading, he said.
Villamizar hopes to find a job in Chicago so that he can help his wife and two teenage children he left back home.
Eventually he would like his family to join him in Chicago, “if I have the opportunity to bring them,” he said.
Ryan Johnson, spokesperson with the mayor’s office, confirmed 103 migrants got to town Wednesday and added that city officials continue to expect arrivals on a rolling basis.
“In partnership with our colleagues from local community-based organizations, Cook County, and the State of Illinois, we are providing these individuals and families with emergency shelter and connection to needed services,” Johnson said in a statement.
“We will continue to live out our values as a welcoming city and respond accordingly.”
At an unrelated news conference Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot commented on the situation and said she considered the communication and collaboration with “our federal partners” and “folks in the White House” regular and “quite good” when asked by the Tribune if there had been any talks going on.
The dialogue and collaboration has not been as open with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who the mayor said does not want to cooperate.
“I’d love to have a conversation with Gov. Abbott, I have a long list of things on my agenda, but I’ve been speaking, obviously, to him publicly about let’s just treat each other with respect,” Lightfoot said at the earlier news conference.
“There’s a way to do it. It’s real simple: Pick up the phone, send me an email, work through third parties. I’d love to see that,” Lightfoot said.
“Because that to me would show that he’s importantly, that he’s regarding these folks as human beings who are deserving of respect and dignity and not treating them just like freight to be shipped across the country.”
People wanting to help can visit chicago.gov/support.
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(Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed.)
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