Kelvis Sanchez has lived in fear for so long that he no longer reacts to the sounds of gunshots, screams or windows breaking that ordinarily would have terrified him.
A recent morning, the 30-year-old Venezuelan stood in his kitchen and propped his toddler daughter up over his shoulder. He and his wife had run several extension cords outside for electricity. Bare bulbs and wires hung down from the ceiling, several feet above the head of their 4-year-old — who is named Milagro, Spanish for “miracle.”
“We left (Venezuela) because of the violence and the chaos. And now, we’ve found ourselves again in the middle of chaos,” Sanchez said. “We really didn’t expect this to happen when we entered the United States.”
After migrants started coming to Chicago in 2022, state agencies launched a program that helped those staying in shelters resettle into rental housing. Migrants generally moved to the South and West sides, where some have encountered patterns of violence and chaos similar to what they risked everything to leave behind.
Sanchez said his kids can’t go out alone because of frequent shootings near the building where they live in Washington Park. Other migrant families with no other affordable options have settled there, too. They cram multiple beds into sparse rooms and pool resources for meals. It’s been hard, they say.
“My daughters hide under the bed when they hear the gunshots,” Sanchez said.
And now that President-elect Donald Trump is promising the largest deportations in United States history, the Sanchez family and other migrants are bracing themselves for what could be worse — potential expulsion from the country by armed federal agents, and the accompanying terror, confusion and threat of being separated from loved ones.
“We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois. If your Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside,” said Trump’s hand-picked border czar, Tom Homan, at a recent Chicago event hosted by local Republicans.
Over the past two and a half years, migrants have frequently become the target of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the city.
In September, there was a 911 call that 32 migrants were “trespassing” and “showing guns in the courtyard” of the Washington Park building, several blocks away from Parkway Gardens.
While police said the report of a migrant takeover was unfounded, there was at least one homicide this year at the complex where the offenders and victims were Venezuelan.
If Trump does stage mass deportations, as he’s repeatedly said he would, some of the migrant families who live there are worried they might be punished for the actions of the few who commit crimes around them.
Washington Park housing complex
In the courtyard of the tan brick two-story building in the 6100 block of South King Drive, mothers often gather, speaking warm, rhythmic Venezuelan Spanish — dropping the “s” at the end of their words.
While locals who have lived at the building for decades say they’ve grown used to their new neighbors, some residents question why migrants have received help with rent from the state. They say their community, also crippled by years of endemic poverty, has largely been ignored.
Kids’ dirt bikes have piled up in the typically trash-strewn strip of grass between the building and the sidewalk. Many of the windows in the housing complex are cracked or boarded up with plywood.
Most afternoons when it’s warm enough, groups of young men gather under an arch to cautiously watch the cars pass. They’ll yell at people they know.
The block typically has seen high rates of crime and shootings, an analysis of Chicago police data found, both before and after migrants arrived.
In 2024, officers recorded 97 crimes on the block, including three homicides, six shootings, three armed robberies, one sexual assault and 16 other violent felonies. Of the three homicides, the Police Department made an arrest only for the most recent one, department data shows. Of the other remaining 26 violent crimes last year, police reported making an arrest in just three.
The Sanchezes
Sanchez and his wife, Yorgelis Rangel, 27, left the rural city of Elorza, Venezuela, because they were threatened by drug-trafficking groups.
The couple fled Venezuela for the U.S. with three children under the age of 10. They, like hundreds of thousands of others, spent months traversing mountains and rivers, riding buses when they could and walking the rest of the way.
Rangel remembered that at a shelter in Mexico, right before they crossed the border, there was a group of kids playing in the dirt road.
“They asked me to let my son come out and play with them, but I didn’t let him,” Rangel said. “And a little while later, one of the kids was run over. Some guy there was drunk.”
Sanchez’s eyes glazed over as he replayed the scene in his mind.
“I’d forgotten,” he said. “It’s strange — when you go through so many things, you start becoming tougher like that.”
The family arrived in Chicago in March 2024. They applied for and qualified for state rental assistance, and moved into a house on the Far South Side. Sanchez applied for temporary protected status — a humanitarian program offered by the U.S. government — and received a work permit.
But after Sanchez was beaten by another migrant’s husband who they had let stay there, he needed a medical form to go back to work.
Without stable income, the family started looking for more affordable places to go.
A viral rumor
On Sept. 2, around the time the Sanchez family was searching for housing, the 911 dispatch call came in at 7:45 p.m. that 32 Venezuelans were “trespassing” and “showing guns in the courtyard” of the Washington Park building. According to a source close to the property manager, the call was made by a tenant in the building who isn’t a migrant.
Chicago police said it was a call for service and that no police report was generated. A day later, a group of residents gathered under the arch said the call was unfounded and that everyone was living together peacefully.
Still, news of the call was tweeted out by Elon Musk on X. Musk, a close ally of Trump, has increasingly used the social media platform as a microphone to amplify his political views.
At the time, panic over the emergence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had spread in Colorado after Fox News in Denver aired a surveillance video showing a group of migrant men armed with semi-automatic long guns and pistols in an apartment complex in the city of Aurora, CO.
Musk and his conservative allies tried to compare the Washington Park call to the viral claims of an armed gang takeover in west suburban Aurora, which people living in the Chicago housing complex dismissed.
Later that week after the original call, Lawrence Flowers, 21, a resident of Washington Park, looked fondly at a migrant child playing in the courtyard with her grandmother and said she reminded him of his own daughter, Zoe. His daughter died several years ago while he was incarcerated, he said.
Flowers asked the migrant woman, through Google Translate, what she was making for dinner. The people who live nearby sometimes pay her to cook for them, he said.
“They’re family. They’re so nice to us. I don’t know why everyone is trying to make a bad perception of us,” Flowers said of the 911 call.
“No, they are literally with us. There’s no war. There’s no gang taking over.”
A new apartment
The Sanchez family, looking for cheap housing, heard about the Washington Park housing complex through a family connection. In early November, they signed for a second-floor apartment there.
But just as the family decided to move, there was a shooting on the second floor.
According to police, on Nov. 11 a 30-year-old Venezuelan migrant was found in an apartment at the complex shot in his head and chest. Those living at the complex said the shooting was the result of an escalation of violence between two migrants.
Eight days later, another man was shot in the neck and back. Both the offender and victim were Venezuelan, a source said.
Sanchez and his wife moved into their new apartment about a week after the second shooting.
“The day we arrived, there were gunshots. Someone came out and fired a gun outside, destroyed the bus stop, and left,” Sanchez said. “But the thing is, since we didn’t have any money and we had already paid for the apartment, we couldn’t go anywhere else.”
On the morning of Nov. 25, right after their move, the building managers boarded up several units on the second floor, including the Sanchez apartment. Their family was locked out.
The Chicago Police Department closed off five apartments in the building due to safety concerns, said a source close to the building’s manager. It caught everyone by surprise.
“It’s not fair to come and shut the doors and not give us an opportunity, a chance,” said a Venezuelan woman named Alejandra Yovera, who has four kids under the age of 12. “Some of these apartments don’t even have light, others don’t have heat.”
Luckily, Rangel and Sanchez were able to get their clothes and immigration papers out of the room before it was closed off. It was freezing.
“Our littlest had a bad cold. I think maybe because of all the wind,” Rangel remembered. “And the boy had a swollen eye. All of the kids had swollen eyes.”
Everyone squeezed into rooms available in neighbors’ apartments for the night. The water in the apartment was dirty, Rangel said, but it was better than being cold and on the street. They slept on an air mattress, huddling by heaters.
Over a month later, the family is still sleeping in the crowded apartment. The upstairs units are still boarded up. Sanchez still hasn’t received his medical form clearing him to work.
Uncertainty
On Jan. 8, Sanchez’s 31st birthday, he picked up his 9-year-old son, Manuel, from Myra Bradwell School of Excellence in South Shore. Manuel’s teacher, Tracy White, followed the third grader out with a black trash bag filled with presents she said were from Santa. The bag was almost bigger than him.
“How is he feeling right now?” Sanchez asked White through the Google Translate app on her phone.
“He’s not doing very well,” she said. “If you don’t have anyone, we could try for a social worker in school.”
Sanchez thanked White for the presents and drove his son home to the apartment complex. When they pulled up, Rangel, Manuel’s mom, was on the back porch throwing away their plastic Christmas tree. She hugged him.
Manuel ran inside and immediately opened his presents — a toy car with a remote control and a track. The other kids living at the complex crowded around him on a bunk bed.
While the kids played, Sanchez quietly sat in the corner eating rice and chicken. His hands were covered with paint from the day job he’d picked up for extra money. His wife said they didn’t have enough to buy him a birthday cake this year.
Sanchez said he had some leads on an apartment, and that he wanted to leave as soon as he could.
But Trump’s rise to power may complicate things, he said. He’s worried the incoming president will take away his temporary legal status and make it impossible for him to get a real job even when his head recovers.
Still, as he falls asleep to gunshots, he said he sometimes understands the call for mass deportation.
“Those who are causing harm should be deported. Even Venezuelans criticize them, and I agree,” he said. “I don’t think — and I pray they don’t — come for people like us.”
Chicago Tribune’s Joe Mahr contributed.