This story was initially printed by Borderless Journal. Join its e-newsletter to study the most recent about Chicago’s immigrant communities.
BRIDGEPORT — When Yusmary* was first invited to “the Orphanage,” she thought she had lastly discovered a secure place to rebuild her life.
“The Orphanage,” a nickname for a former church constructing in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, was well-worn, but it surely had a kitchen, bedrooms and accessible showers — issues she didn’t have on the crowded, city-run migrant shelter in close by Pilsen the place she stayed together with her husband and three youngsters. At its peak, the previous warehouse turned shelter in Pilsen housed over two thousand migrants, a fraction of the over 51,000 migrants who had come from the southern border to Chicago since August 2022.
Yusmary discovered sleeping troublesome within the Pilsen shelter and feared for her household’s well-being. A December 2023 investigation by Borderless discovered that the shelter had freezing temperatures and unsanitary loos. The meals the shelter employees gave them was generally spoiled, migrants instructed Borderless on the time, and chickenpox and the flu unfold shortly. Simply days after Borderless printed its 2023 investigation, a five-year-old boy on the shelter fell sick and died.
“We have been dwelling with fixed illness,” Yusmary stated of the city-run shelter.
However she stated issues shifted when she met a mutual support employee exterior the Pilsen shelter. The employee invited her to go to “the Orphanage,” the place she may bathe and eat a meal.
Yusmary instantly noticed the potential within the house. She requested if she may begin cooking meals — heat Venezuelan meals — within the constructing for migrants like herself. She aimed to present them a style of house and a substitute for meals distributed on the city-run shelters. El Comedor Comunitario — the Group Kitchen— was born.
Chicago has a wealthy historical past of mutual support work supporting immigrants. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and the height of the migrant buses coming to Chicago from Texas, such community-based networks helped fill essential gaps in authorities help and charity efforts by connecting individuals to meals, clothes and housing.
El Comedor stood aside from many of those mutual support efforts as a neighborhood kitchen run by and for migrants. At its peak, El Comedor served free, scorching meals to migrants and people in want twice every week, gave out free clothes and provided a secure house for migrant youngsters to play. The self-organized group additionally supplied free housing to migrants throughout the town’s best homelessness disaster in a decade.
However the sale of First Trinity Lutheran Church, the house of “the Orphanage,” has modified every little thing.
Migrants concerned with El Comedor instructed Borderless they have been requested to go away the constructing in March. They are saying they knew the constructing had been bought however have been blindsided to study they needed to go so shortly.
“There was going to return a time after we needed to depart,” Linares*, one of many cooks, instructed Borderless. “I imply, this was sudden.”
The eviction comes as tens of hundreds of migrants who arrived in Chicago over the past three years are going through a triple disaster – homelessness, meals insecurity and elevated deportations beneath President Donald Trump.
Meals That Tastes of Residence
El Comedor was born throughout a special disaster: In October 2023, almost 4,000 migrants who had been bused to Chicago throughout “Operation Lone Star” have been sleeping within the lobbies of police stations throughout the town. The operation was an try by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to strain the federal authorities to enact stricter immigration insurance policies.
“We have been the primary to open our doorways to the migrants and so they’re nonetheless coming. And we have now not turned them away,” Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling instructed the Related Press on Oct 17, 2023. “However what we’d like are different individuals to step up in these conditions as a result of the burden has been on the police division to deal with individuals.”
On the time, particular person volunteers and mutual support teams have been already working with migrants, offering pressing medical care and handing out sleeping luggage and sandwiches. “The Orphanage” turned a pure house for a few of this mutual support work. Midwest Books to Prisoners, a nonprofit group that sends literature to prisoners throughout the nation, labored out of the constructing, and different teams frequently hosted live shows and neighborhood occasions. As soon as Yusmary linked with “the Orphanage,” neighborhood members stepped as much as present El Comedor with the elements for meals.
Relying on what elements they got, they may prepare dinner arepa – a flatbread fashionable in Venezuela – filled with cheese, black beans or hen. In an enormous steel bowl, they may make ensalada de payaso (clown salad), with beets, tomatoes, onions and carrots. Different instances, they may make banana milk or hen soup.
Phrase of the neighborhood kitchen shortly unfold amongst Chicago’s migrants, most of whom got here from Venezuela and have been hungry for meals that tasted of house. Some have been staying on the city-run migrant shelters, just like the one in Pilsen, which have been spun as much as transfer migrants out of police stations.
El Comedor fed them on Tuesdays and Saturdays on folding tables in the neighborhood middle’s predominant room. As the town moved migrants from police stations to city-run shelters to sponsored residences or homeless shelters, “the Orphanage” additionally started appearing as a shelter for migrants. Some migrants have been capable of get work permits, others weren’t. Many struggled to get the common paychecks essential to hire an condo in Chicago. So whereas they labored, utilized for asylum, and regarded for a spot to dwell, “the Orphanage” gave them a secure house.
“It’s not straightforward to work right here,” Yusmary stated. “You want braveness, you must have religion. You exit, you look, however with out papers, it’s very troublesome to get a job. And there are occasions while you do get a job, however it is rather, very difficult.”
With the election of President Trump and threats of mass deportations, El Comedor modified once more. Many migrants have been afraid to exit, and El Comedor slowed down its meal program. They made boxed meals that migrants may eat wherever they have been dwelling. They have been additionally employed by one other mutual support group to prepare dinner meals that might be given away in neighborhood fridges.
Caught within the Center
As El Comedor was evolving, issues have been additionally altering at “the Orphanage.”
The First Lutheran Church of the Trinity property was bought in June 2024 to developer Howard Mui for $1.1 million. Quickly after, Mui’s lawyer despatched a 30-day discover to these dwelling within the property to go away by Aug. 1, 2024.
Eviction court docket information present {that a} Windy Metropolis Course of Serving agent efficiently gave the 30-day discover to “Jeremy Hammond” (sic) on June 27, 2024. Further paperwork submitted to the court docket by Mui’s lawyer present a “Co-working House Settlement” between Jason Hammond of Midwest Books to Prisoners and Thomas Gaulke of First Lutheran Church of the Trinity for the nonprofit group to make use of the previous church house. Nonetheless, Gaulke denied signing the settlement in a dialog with a church consultant, based on a notarized certification from the consultant in court docket filings. Gaulke didn’t reply to Borderless’ requests for remark, and Hammond declined to go on document for this story.
After residents didn’t depart, Mui’s lawyer, Nicholas Frenzel, filed a grievance in eviction court docket on Aug. 2, 2024, asking for possession of the constructing. Frenzel didn’t reply to requests for a remark.
The eviction court docket course of has been complicated for the El Comedor migrants, who’re unfamiliar with the U.S. court docket system and principally don’t communicate English. The migrants instructed Borderless they didn’t know concerning the ongoing eviction case till the identical process-serving agent returned on Jan. 27, 2025, and gave a court docket summons to one of many migrants, who handed it on to Hammond.
Migrants instructed Borderless that they had hoped to remain on the constructing till August 2025, as they have been instructed that was the earlier proprietor’s rental settlement date. Whereas the eviction case just isn’t over, the decide instructed Borderless {that a} settlement is shut. The main points of the proposed settlement will not be public, however the eviction is predicted to maneuver ahead. El Comedor’s group will quickly must discover a new place to dwell and prepare dinner.
“There may be No Assure of Something”
Amid the uncertainty at El Comedor and deportation threats from the Trump administration, Yusmary is questioning whether or not she and her household ought to keep in Chicago.
“It’s one thing that I consider that of the 100% of Venezuelans who’ve come to america, 90% need to return,” Yusmary stated. The information of Venezuelans being captured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers and placed on a airplane to El Salvador shook her, she stated.
“There is no such thing as a approach I need to keep right here in america, and even much less now with this case,” Yusmary stated. “We have no idea what nation they will ship us to tomorrow, what concepts this President has in thoughts to say: Venezuelans at the moment are like a army goal for Donald Trump. What will occur tomorrow?”
Yusmary owned a small enterprise in Venezuela that bought faculty provides. She fled the nation when her enterprise failed and she or he confronted extortion amid Venezuela’s sociopolitical disaster. However she says she is keen to danger being harmed by returning to Venezuela due to the present political shift within the U.S.
“There is no such thing as a assure of something at the moment,” stated Yusmary, who utilized for a piece allow and asylum however has but to obtain both. “I say virtually each thought is to attempt to make some cash, acquire at the least what we spent coming and head again to Venezuela.”
Her fellow El Comedor chef, Linares, has gotten a piece allow. However Linares, a police officer in Venezuela earlier than coming to Chicago together with her spouse, says she, too, is considering returning house.
Linares says they have been each attempting to make ends meet – working alongside Yusmary till 3 a.m., juggling a facet gig at an “arts and crafts” manufacturing firm, the place they make customized cups and notebooks. They hoped to ship cash to their household again house.
Now, their desires lay shattered.
“We really feel like we hit a brick wall,” Linares stated.
A 2024 survey carried out by NORC on the College of Chicago discovered that Chicagoans usually tend to need immigration diminished and extra prone to assist the deportation of undocumented immigrants than People generally.
The identical survey discovered that half of Chicagoans suppose the town just isn’t doing a great job of taking good care of migrants, notably in relation to housing and job placement. Two and a half years after the migrant buses began coming to Chicago, neighborhood members are nonetheless stepping as much as fill within the gaps.
On Could 1 night, a crowd streamed right into a dive bar within the Logan Sq. neighborhood to attend a live performance billed as “Chicago’s Premier Anti-Fascist Rock and Roll Expertise.” A neighborhood German soccer group fan membership, FC St. Pauli Chicago, had organized an evening of music and raffles to lift cash for El Comedor. The migrants proceed to gather donations by their Venmo account @comedor-comunitario-chicago and hope to lift sufficient to discover a new house.
“We’re a bunch of random individuals who come collectively to look at soccer for a German soccer group, however we’re coming collectively as a result of we have now shared values,” stated occasion organizer Brad Thomson. “We’re right here to face up not only for the not too long ago arrived migrants from Central America, [but] from South America, and different areas.”
Regardless of every little thing towards them, El Comedor’s migrants are nonetheless combating for his or her neighborhood, and their neighborhood continues to be combating for them.
They instructed Borderless they need to proceed reminding Chicagoans of Venezuela’s ‘seasoning.’
“That’s how we acquired our begin,” Yusmary stated. “We did every little thing, however with our flavors.”
*Borderless just isn’t utilizing the total names of migrants concerned with El Comedor at their request and attributable to considerations about their security.
Contributing reporting from Oscar Gomez.
