52 days on the road: A migrant family’s desperate journey to Chicago – The Denver Post

Nell Salzman | Chicago Tribune

Esperanza Beatriz Mendez didn’t get to say goodbye to her mother before leaving her home in Venezuela with her three children.

Her mother, whom she called the most important person in her life, was so strongly opposed to her making the dangerous trek to the U.S. that she wouldn’t say goodbye. Esperanza sobbed outside her mother’s house, but she knew she needed to leave, she said.

“I have plans: The first is to work and buy a house and bring my mom,” she said in Spanish. “I hope she’s doing OK, that she hasn’t fallen into depression, and that she’ll wait for me.”

Esperanza and her children fled Venezuela to escape an economic collapse that had shut down her kids’ schools and her city’s grocery stores. Their goal now: to make it to Chicago and meet a relative.

The group of five — Esperanza, her three kids and her son’s pregnant girlfriend, plus the family dog — trekked over 3,000 miles for more than seven weeks and survived Panama’s Darién Gap, a harrowing jungle where they watched, helpless and horrified, as other migrants were swept up in rivers just steps ahead of them. They slept on the ground and experienced desperation they could never have imagined.

But when they finally got to a shelter in the U.S., they faced a new kind of worry. They were in a country they didn’t know, directed by signs they couldn’t read and left to navigate complicated city grids they couldn’t comprehend. They had no cell service or any real plan for how to reach Chicago.

The Tribune traveled with Esperanza and her family from El Paso — one of the world’s largest urban border regions — to Chicago Union Station to gain a better understanding of what migrants might experience on the U.S. portion of their journey. The trip took more than 48 hours by bus and train.

About 11 months since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending migrants from Texas to Chicago, the city has received 176 buses and more than 12,000 people, most of whom are from Venezuela.

Buses to Chicago are sent not only by Abbott, but also by the city of Denver and Catholic Charities in San Antonio. Denver began providing free transportation for people to other destinations in mid-December, much to the exasperation of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who in January demanded in a letter to Colorado’s governor that the city stop. Months later, under a new mayor, the buses keep arriving.

Usually, migrant families have people in the U.S. who can support them financially to buy air or bus fares to get to their destination cities. But some from Venezuela, like the Mendez family, arrive with no money and few connections.

So instead, through word-of-mouth at the border, they hear they can go to El Paso and buy cheap bus tickets to Denver or San Antonio, which will send them to other cities — mainly Chicago and New York. Most hope to formally seek asylum, a form of protection that allows those who face persecution or harm in their country of origin to remain in the United States.

The Mendez family wanted to go to Chicago because the father of the two youngest children lives there, they said. Esperanza said it was unclear if there would be a place for them to stay when they got to Chicago. The children’s father had been in the city for about eight months, they said, and though they were in communication with him they weren’t sure what would happen.

The Mendez family

Esperanza calls herself lucky.

When she was little, her mother cleaned hospitals and her father was a carpenter. As an adult, she cleaned houses in Venezuela.

“But after a while, I couldn’t anymore,” she said, referring to the sociopolitical and economic crises in her country that forced people to stop paying for cleaning services.

Since 2015, more than 7 million people have fled Venezuela as refugees and migrants, making their exodus the second-largest external displacement crisis in the world, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. While the majority of them have landed in Latin American and Caribbean countries, more than 500,000 have made their way into the United States.

The U.S. government currently allows up to 30,000 individuals per month — from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — to come to the United States for a period of two years. More than 48,000 Venezuelans have arrived since Jan. 5, according to recent Department of Homeland Security data.

The Mendez family’s journey to the United States took them just under two months, while it can take some people six months or longer. Esperanza traveled with her 19-year-old son Fabian, 10-year-old daughter Yuledy and 9-year-old son Pedro. Fabian’s six-months pregnant girlfriend Yolexi Cubillan also joined them.

So did their part-Chihuahua puppy, year-and-a-half-old Milo.

Yuledy, who often wore pink and put her hair in a long ponytail, liked to hold Milo and take selfies on her mother’s phone. Pedro had trouble sitting still, exploring the alleys behind the shelter and tapping his Crocs against the ground on the bus.

Over the course of the trip, Yuledy and Pedro were each other’s playmates. They raced up and down train platforms, arm wrestled on curbs, explored nooks and doors at the shelter and threw plastic rubber ducks for Milo.

Yolexi came on the journey without her own family. Her two brothers, one older and one younger, remained in Venezuela, she said. She used to be a student, until the teachers left her school.

“Mi hija postiza. ‘My second daughter,’ I say to people,” Esperanza said of her son’s girlfriend, who shows off braces when she smiles.

Fabian liked to put his hands on Yolexi’s swollen stomach and comment on the baby’s kicking. He hoped for a boy, he said, and she wanted a girl. He promised his mother he would work to provide for his family.

“But when he was younger, he was wild. Worse than any of them. Bad. He slowed everything down,” Esperanza said, laughing.

She scolded Pedro when he wandered off to explore a corner of the shelter and didn’t tell her where he was going. She laughed with Yuledy when she put a plush stuffed animal on her head or drew a dog that looked like Milo. She made sure Yolexi ate and rested in the shelter.

Esperanza has the names of her two sons tattooed on her forearms and a heart with the initials of her three children on her ankle.

“Children are our greatest miracle and a blessing,” she said. “Enjoy them, be with them.”

Esperanza has a large cyst on the right side of her neck for which she hopes to get medical treatment. She didn’t like to talk about it. She used an inhaler and often complained of a headache and about feeling feverish.

“It makes me embarrassed. I feel bad,” she said of her cyst. “I brought all of my papers, because I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be treated.”

Yuledy looked away when her mother talked about the cyst.

‘The ugliest experience of my life’

Esperanza’s family was her biggest worry in the jungle. The natural world doesn’t discriminate, Fabian said. The rivers in the dense rainforest of Darién take you and lift you off your feet, no matter who you are or where you come from.

“Nature doesn’t let you know what it’s doing. It doesn’t give you warning,” he said in Spanish.

The Darién Gap is a jungle between Colombia and Panama that has seen a record number of migrants crossing through its 60 miles of rainforest, mountains and swamps the past few years. It’s considered one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world. More than 248,000 migrants crossed in 2022, according to the Panamanian government.

It’s also one of the wettest regions, and May and June are peak months for rainfall. Rain creates landslides and flash floods that can sweep migrants up when they sleep.

“A lot of people die,” Esperanza said.

The Mendez family entered the Darién on May 29 and left June 4.

The water flowing through the jungle changes color from clear to brown, depending on how quickly it rushes and churns sediment. At one point they saw a woman with a baby being swept up by it. A man ran and tried to help, but the current was too strong, and neither the woman nor the baby survived.

“It was her dad,” said Fabian. “You could hear his screams.”

Pedro fell into the river while holding Milo, but was pulled out by another migrant.

“The ugliest experience of my life was watching my son fall in that river,” Esperanza said. “That trauma will stick with me. I never want to cross rivers again.”

Fabian and Yolexi continued through the river, but after watching the drownings, Esperanza went a different way with her two younger children, over a mountain. They reunited an hour and a half later, Fabian said, but his mother was terrified. She hated being separated.

“Mami, here I am!” he screamed to her through the thick foliage.

Esperanza said she hated the heavy rain and cold air. The flash flood water that crashed against the rocks in the night near where they slept, soaking them and their meager belongings. They lost most of what they owned in the rising water.

But these are everyone’s experiences, Esperanza said. Some people do pass through, but others don’t make it. They get tired. They can’t find the strength to continue.

“At times, I didn’t have strength,” she said.

When she felt weak, her children helped her keep going — especially Yuledy.

“I walked and walked over mountains until I couldn’t. I kneeled d

own and told God I was ready for my death. But I saw (Yuledy) continuing, continuing, and she gave me strength to do so too.”

“Levántate,” Yuledy had said to her mother at her lowest point. “Stand up.”

Juárez

After going from Panama to Mexico by public bus, the Mendez family spent 14 days in Monterrey and four nights in the border town of Juárez, Mexico. Crippled by synthetic drug trafficking and poverty, Juárez is known for its high rate of violent crime, including killings and kidnappings. The Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, a Mexican think tank that annually releases the top 50 most dangerous cities in the world, ranked Juárez as No. 9 in 2022 with over 1,000 homicides.

About a dozen migrants at Chamizal Park in Juárez who spoke to the Tribune had been waiting weeks to cross the border, sleeping on mats or blankets and scrubbing their clothes in plastic buckets.

They had survived the Darién Gap and now lay on the dry grass, scrolling on their phones. It was midday, so others had gone off to find temporary work. Garbage and stray toys were strewn on the paths around the park. A 3-year-old from Venezuela with curly hair sat on a cushion with her mom eating strawberry wafer cookies.

While some spend weeks or even months in Juárez, Esperanza and her family spent their four nights sleeping close to the bridge. The first night, the rumbling of a train above startled them. Pedro grabbed his mother, screaming.

The only way asylum-seekers can request protection at U.S. ports of entry is by scheduling an appointment through the new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One app, an official mobile application used by CBP to inspect and document arrivals and departures in the United States.

The app has improved significantly since it was created in October 2020 with no Spanish-language option, said Crystal Sandoval, director of strategic initiatives for the Mexico branch of Las Americas immigrant advocacy group. But people who have phones with slower data often take longer to get appointments, and many still wait months. It is frustrating and can put them at risk, Sandoval said.

“And I mean by being kidnapped. Being robbed. Being victims of sexual harassment or crimes,” Sandoval said.

Following the end of a pandemic-era border law in early May that brought soaring migration numbers to the U.S., the app has helped keep illegal border crossings low, but has increased the number of people waiting in Juárez for an appointment to enter legally. There were more than 42,000 CBP encounters with migrants attempting to enter the U.S. at El Paso in April, and the number decreased by tens of thousands in the following two months.

While most people wait for an appointment on the app, some try to just get in the queue at a port of entry, and others cross the river or scale the wall, out of desperation or fleeing violence.

On the El Paso side of the border, the fence rises 30 feet from the sand. Gov. Abbott ordered bound loops of barbed wire to be added to the top and side of the fence.

“Razor sharp,” an immigration officer said to the Tribune.

‘It made me feel everything’

On July 11, Esperanza and her family got in a line and, using the app, crossed over. They were told to wait in a little room directly beyond the bridge. Esperanza said she was nervous about being processed, but they were moved quickly along and asked if they wanted to go to a shelter.

“I knew I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have anything, so I agreed,” said Esperanza.

If migrants enter through the CBP One app, their case is put under discretion of a CBP officer, and the outcome is random. They can be paroled, meaning they may travel freely in the U.S. until the assigned court date for their asylum hearing. But sometimes they are arbitrarily put in detention facilities, according to shelter directors and legal advocates.

Those who make it across are taken to shelters run by faith-based groups or the El Paso government near the ports of entry. Most people traveling solo go to Sacred Heart Church in downtown El Paso. Others, like the Mendez family, are driven to smaller churches nearby.

The Mendez family of five plus dog walked out of the CBP appointment and onto the street in El Paso. They were picked up by a van with a family from Haiti and brought to Holy Family Church, a shelter slightly farther from the port of entry.

Esperanza had left everything behind and was fearful of what the future might hold.

“It made me feel everything,” she said.

Three hundred fifty-nine yards from the metal wall that separates Mexico and the United States, the Mendez family settled in the church enclosed by a chain-link fence.

“Bienvenidos a Casa Miguel!” a sign on the outside was painted in bright red letters. “Welcome to Miguel’s House!”

Emergency cots stacked up in one corner, and flimsy bags stuffed with clothes piled up in a container against the opposite wall. Toddlers ran in circles, pushing plastic trucks. One wore khaki pants that wouldn’t stay up. She giggled and tumbled around on the floor.

The shelter is a temporary respite center, a place where people spend the night before arranging transportation to cities across the United States. About 50 people are dropped off every day, often directly by CBP from ports of entry around the city, said the Rev. Jarek Jaroslaw Wysoczanski, who runs the church.

A doctor saw Pedro, who had an infection in his leg. It was a fungus from sleeping on the ground, said Esperanza. The same doctor gave Yolexi a checkup and prenatal vitamins. The family ate dinner and fell asleep.

Esperanza said she got up early to clean. It made her wonder if she could find other refugee shelters to work for once they got to Chicago.

In the after-dinner drowsy time of day, Holy Family was remarkably still and quiet. In the parking lot, distant shouts of boys and men playing soccer bounced off the walls of neighboring houses.

The hard canvas camitas, or cots, and the donated toys and non-perishables provided the best living situation some migrants had seen in weeks or even months, several told the Tribune.

“They have been so kind to us. They have treated us so well,” Esperanza said.

At one point in the evening, Esperanza couldn’t find Yuledy and it drove her into a state of panic. Meanwhile, Yuledy sat calmly at a table in the middle of the shelter, using pencils to fill in coloring sheets. Esperanza scolded her for not telling her where she was going.

When Milo chewed through his collar, Esperanza sat on a cot and sewed it. She threaded the needle and pulled it steadily through, as though she’d tied the red threads together hundreds of times before.

Her first night in the shelter, Esperanza cried. She had cried hard before they left Maracaibo and in the depths of the jungle. She’d cried in relief when they got to the bridge in Juárez, Mexico. But this was a different cry — a tired, quiet cry about how much longer they still had to go before reaching a place they’d been dreaming about for months.

Milo

The following morning, Pedro and Yuledy played with Milo and waved plastic American flags. After sitting down to a breakfast of doughnuts and coffee, Wysoczanski approached Esperanza to confirm her travel plans.

“He told me he would help us get to Lenver. Do you know what Lenver is?” she asked.

Many migrants in El Paso buy tickets to Denver or San Antonio because they’ve heard those cities are providing free transportation to larger cities including Chicago or New York, according to volunteers at the church.

A bus ticket to Denver from El Paso is $90 for an adult, while airplane and bus tickets to major cities out of El Paso can be over $300. Denver purchases bus tickets for arrivals to go elsewhere in the U.S., which keeps their municipal shelters relatively empty. Migrants see Denver as a transit hub with “free tickets.”

About 15 to 20 times a year, the church receives a large family with few resources, so volunteers pool together to help, said Wysoczanski. The Mendez family was one such family.

Esperanza was surprised when she was told a bus trip to Denver would take more than 10 hours, but she knew that with five people and a dog, flying would be too expensive. She went with Wysoczanski to buy bus tickets, bringing the family’s Venezuelan IDs. Her kids and Milo stayed at the shelter.

A woman in a gray vest collected the pooled cash Wysoczanski took from his pocket, then Esperanza asked if she could bring Milo along.

“Sorry, but you won’t be able to,” she said in Spanish. “It’s bus policy.”

Esperanza’s face fell. The family had carried tiny Milo for thousands of miles, had brought him through the jungle and on an 18-hour bus ride to Monterrey from the south of Mexico. They couldn’t leave him.

But when Esperanza asked for her money back, the woman at the counter refused. She shook her head and walked away.

“Can’t we get it registered as a service dog for all of the trauma they’ve been through?” Wysoczanski said in Spanish, frantically.

Stunned, Esperanza stood at the counter, crying. She had told herself repeatedly on the journey that if she needed to leave the dog or give him to someone, it would devastate her.

Almost half an hour later, Wysoczanski and Esperanza still stood in line in front of the bus ticket counter, wondering what to do. The woman reluctantly came back, opened the cash register and returned the bills from the drawer.

“Next time, pay attention to the policy,” she said.

Wysoczanski and Esperanza drove to the Los Angeles Limousine Express bus station nearby and paid the same price for a trip with a dog, under the promise that it was vaccinated and would ride in a carrier the entire time.

The Mendez family — Milo included — would leave later that evening, they were told.

Wide paved streets

Because ticket-buying had taken so long, Wysoczanski had to leave for a meeting. Esperanza walked the mile back to the shelter from the bus station in El Paso, the roofs of Juárez behind her, just across the border.

She remembered her time in the Darién Gap as she walked, pointing to the top of a 17-story hotel in El Paso — Hotel Paso Del Norte. Her family climbed over 11 peaks just as tall at the beginning of the previous month, she said.

She looked around at El Paso’s wide paved streets, asking questions about each shop and trying out English words such as “flower.” In Venezuela, she said, fashion was important. She wore brightly colored, carefully curated clothes. Most of her belongings were lost in the Darién.

“Are clothes cheap here?” she asked, peering into a display case at a mannequin dressed in business casual.

She held her immigration papers closely. Her assigned court date for formally seeking asylum isn’t until Dec. 3, 2025. She wants to look for a job, gather money and put a roof over her children’s heads, she said.

Toward the unknown

From their first day in the United States, the Mendez family learned migration is less about how well you can move and more about how well you can wait. The 105-degree heat kept most everyone inside the shelter all day, waiting to leave on their arranged transportation.

Esperanza and Pedro drank coffee and ate stale morning doughnuts to pass the time. As evening drew closer, they fidgeted, talked to each other and gathered belongings. They ate dinner quietly — spaghetti, salad, bread, popsicles and green grapes.

Esperanza loaded Milo into his plastic crate, donated by one of the volunteers at the shelter. Wysoczanski packaged bags of nonperishable travel food.

They then piled onto each other’s laps in the van and drove through El Paso. People gathered outside Los Angeles Limousines. The family and Wysoczanski hugged and took pictures in the parking lot.

“We are so grateful to have met you. We will hold you in our hearts forever,” said Esperanza.

She wore donated black leggings and a shirt that said “follow your heart.” Her glasses were perched on her head, and she fiddled with the beads of a rosary tucked under her shirt.

The family boarded the Limousine bus at 7:45 p.m., but were ordered to put Milo in the separate luggage storage area at the bottom of the bus for the duration of the 11-hour trip. Esperanza hadn’t known that would be the policy, and she gasped in shock.

She poured water into an empty Cheerios container and made him drink for a few moments before getting on.

The family then took their seats, cramming their legs up against the plastic fold-up trays in front of them.

Fabian and Yolexi put their heads together and got on their phones. Yuledy tugged on Pedro’s shorts, and told her mom he hadn’t put on underwear at the shelter.

The clouds were dense over Juárez as the full bus took off toward New Mexico. Pedro looked out the window at the mountains passing by. Esperanza took a video on her phone. Yuledy pointed and stared.

“¡Mira, mami! Cuando la muñequita está roja, está ocupado. Miráme,” said Yuledy, gesturing to the figurine outside the bathroom. “Look, Mom! When the little doll is red, it’s occupied. Watch me.”

She skipped down the bus aisle, and Esperanza shook her head knowingly.

The bus was uncomfortable, but the Mendez family slept anyway, twisting their bodies to fit in their seats, which bounced up and down. Cold air blasted from vents above.

The bus hurtled forward, potholes rattling the windows. Esperanza held Yuledy tightly in her arms.

Processed quickly

Esperanza, Fabian, Yolexi, Yuledy and Pedro lowered themselves from the bus in Denver, shook out their legs and grabbed their belongings. No one smiled. Not even when Milo was taken out of his cage.

“The first thing we need to do is ask where the shelter is,” said Fabian, a cloud of uncertainty hanging over his face.

The family walked out of the station into the street. Yuledy picked up a dandelion and put it behind her ear. They stood at the curb. A few groups of migrants in similar situations stood nearby.

A 24-year-old Venezuelan man named Owen Ceballos lingered outside. He struck up a conversation with Fabian, telling him they needed to go to the Coliseum, where they would be processed and helped.

Ceballos said he came to Denver eight months ago and earns money by shuttling migrants from the bus station to the temporary shelter in the Denver Coliseum.

He’s made a living for himself; it’s enough to afford a decent apartment in the city.

He accepted $20, or what he said was half price for the ride, because it was all they could afford. A volunteer at the El Paso shelter had given them cash before they left.

Ceballos played a Mexican song, Marcela Gánara’s “Supe Que Me Amabas,” in the car. Esperanza sang along, looking out the window.

They lined up outside the Coliseum with dozens of other migrants looking for direction. A man in a plaid shirt came over and asked them what their plans were.

“You know people in Chicago, yeah?” he asked in Spanish.

They nodded.

“Chévere,” he said. “Great. We open at 8.”

The Tribune tried to enter the municipal shelter at the Denver arena and was asked by officials to leave the premises. Esperanza said the city also didn’t allow her to enter the Coliseum with Milo. Her children went in while she waited outside. The city immediately bought them five Amtrak tickets leaving later that evening.

“They didn’t offer us water or food. They sat us in plastic chairs and processed us quickly,” Esperanza said.

Denver has received more than 14,000 migrants since December, and has bought about 6,400 bus and Amtrak tickets for over $2.3 million since then, according to Victoria Aguilar, a spokesperson for Denver Human Services. Roughly a third of those have gone to Chicago, according to Denver data.

Jesús de la Torre, a research fellow at Hope Border Institute, which works with migrants in El Paso, Juárez and Las Cruces, said when migrants are put on buses by governors or sent away quickly by charities and city governments, they are treated like political pawns.

“There is a clear need for people to get transportation from border cities to the destination cities. But we need a national coordination system that can help people get to their destinations. We need to make destination cities aware of the number of people arriving. We have to do it in a humane, coordinated way,” he said.

Denver officials put the family on a bus that dropped them off at the train station. The abruptness startled them, and they settled on the platform in front of the map of trains.

‘How pretty’

When will the train get here? Why is it taking so long? How will we know where to board? All of their questions were left unanswered.

A man who introduced himself as Enrique came up to the family and asked them where they were going, if they needed anything. He exchanged WhatsApp numbers with Yolexi.

“No seas tímida, yo necesito a alguien como tu … Te ayudo en lo que sea, pero a ti sola,” he texted her later. “Don’t be shy, I need someone like you … I’ll help you with anything, but you alone.”

The family sat, watching pedestrians pass on their way to the Friday Taylor Swift concert. Fans wore glitter and bedazzled tracksuits. A girl with blond hair and a flowing red dress walked by, and Esperanza stared in awe.

“How pretty,” she said to Yuledy.

Nearby, the Rockies-Yankees game was taking place at Coors Field and roars from the fans rang out. Colorado fans wore pressed purple and white linen sports jerseys. Some looked down at the family as they passed by, but others ignored them.

“It’s beautiful here,” said Esperanza, noticing the planters filled with purple and red flowers. “If it looks like this everywhere, then we’ll be OK.”

But Esperanza was also feverish and in pain. She was hungry and homesick.

She missed the sounds of the Maracucho tongue — the variety of Spanish generally spoken in the Zulia state in the northwest of Venezuela, where she’s from. She longed for her mother’s cooking, for the three-room house they had left behind, the neighbor who used to give her eldest son Fabian grief for the way he didn’t close the door properly. For their two cats, three dogs, two rabbits. For caraotas negras — black beans that simmer on a stove. For divine, smooth coffee.

The family lay on blankets on the concrete, stretching out the snacks they’d received at the shelter in El Paso. Esperanza split a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it slowly, each slice of bread individually.

The train was three hours late. Yuledy and Pedro explored the rooms in Denver’s Union Station, arm wrestled close to the rail, flipped plastic water bottles and raced each other on the platform. Yolexi and Fabian played with each other’s faces and laughed.

It grew dark and started to rain. Finally, a train horn sounded in the distance. Esperanza and her children gathered their pillows and bags and lined up.

Amtrak

On the train, Yuledy fell asleep and so did Esperanza. They slept a long time. When Esperanza woke up she was afraid at first as she opened her eyes to the blurry countryside — junkyards, RV parks and baseball diamonds. She went back to sleep.

It was their first time on a train. They slept into the afternoon.

“I was cold last night,” Yuledy said when she woke up, rubbing her shoulders.

The Amtrak felt roomy compared to the Limousine bus from El Paso.

Pedro and Yuledi ran around with plastic water bottles, exploring. They found the dining car and the bathroom.

“Children under the age of 13 must be accompanied by an adult,” the man running the cafe said over the intercom.

They passed through Nebraska, Iowa and into Illinois, and the family remarked on what they saw out the window. The rows of corn that bent like an optical illusion. The trees, the fields.

“It reminds me of a place in Venezuela called Mene Grande,” said Yolexi, referring to the foothills southeast of Maracaibo.

They passed a lake, and Esperanza pointed it out to Yuledy.

“She wants to learn how to swim. She has always said that to me,” she said.

The hours of barreling in one direction and blowing air from the vent, the smell of stale coffee and body odor twisted Esperanza’s stomach. She winced and pressed her head against the window.

After almost 18 hours on the train, her patience finally ran out. Pedro jumped around excitedly, telling her he was going to explore the car below.

“Please don’t make me go downstairs and find you,” she said.

The lights dimmed and she told Pedro and Yuledy to sit down. She said she was tired of traveling. Her body hurt. She wished she could understand what people were saying over the intercom.

¿Qué hacemos?

Fields turned to scattered buildings, which turned to high-rises, and Pedro and Yuledy looked out the window at the emerging Chicago skyline.

“My dad is there, and he says on the phone that there are many squirrels there,” said Yuledy. “Black squirrels.”

Pedro stuck his chin out and stared at the train platform with wonder. The train slowed to a stop.

Fifty-two days after leaving Venezuela — after trudging through a jungle, traversing mountains and traveling by bus and train — the family of five carried their bags onto the echoing train platform in Chicago Union Station, with no idea of where they were going. Esperanza clutched the dog carrier tightly.

“Welcome to the great hall,” read a sign they couldn’t read.

It was only about 6 p.m., but they were tired, disoriented even, when they shuffled into the airy waiting room. People rolled suitcases behind them, and announcements blared in English. Milo yipped from the carrier.

They admired the high ceilings, ornate carvings and long wooden benches. They even took a photo in front of the American flag that hung down.

The warm light and illuminated signs did nothing to quell Esperanza’s fear. Her face was contorted with worry, which rubbed off on Yuledy. For the first time since arriving in El Paso, Yuledy looked like she might break into tears.

“¿Qué hacemos?” asked Esperanza. “What should we do?”

Fabian had no answers.

“I’ve been told that a bus would pick us up and bring us to a little house where they would process us and take us to a shelter,” said Esperanza.

They walked up West Jackson Boulevard toward the front of the station and sat by a large column, searching for shelters on their phones. Pedestrians walked by wearing floral dresses, drinking alcohol and getting into Ubers.

“I heard they’re giving out two-year leases in Denver, but I don’t know. And we’ve already left. Do you have signal?” Esperanza asked.

Fabian shook his head no. He paced back and forth, looking at the cars flying by on South Canal Street.

“I’m a little tired,” said Pedro, leaning up against a wall.

Esperanza said she hoped Chicago would be better than Denver, but now, lost near the train station with no idea of where to go, she was having doubts.

“For (Denver) it’s easier to send us away than keep us there. It’s true, right? They processed us quickly. It’s easier for them,” she said, remembering her time at the Denver Coliseum. “They take us out. They took me out.”

The family had heard Chicago’s robust shelter system had a lot of benefits: ID cards for children, job opportunities and housing help.

“I don’t want to live in a shelter my entire life,” said Esperanza. “I would like to go somewhere where I’ll be OK. Where I will have opportunities.”

She sat down and watched Chicago pass by in front of her.

They had made it. This was it.

Esperanza recounted how when they left the jungle and were heading toward Panama almost six weeks earlier, they had come upon a group of migrants who had survived the trip, gathered in what she called a “circle of migration.” Yuledy and Pedro had vanished briefly into the circle of people, and as she neared the group, they emerged with food.

She looked over at her kids sitting next to her on the sidewalk.

“They are so brave,” she said. “Thank God they are safe and healthy.”

She sang softly to herself.

Note: Thousands of migrants have arrived at Chicago’s Union Station under the same circumstances as the Mendez family over the past year, and more than 800 are currently sleeping at police stations in dire need of health and resettlement services. According to the city, buses of migrants from the South continue to arrive every day.

©2023 Chicago Tribune. This story was originally published Aug. 6 on Chicago Tribune.

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