SSW 05.08.25

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, artists, photographers, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 12, Issue 9

Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato

Managing Editor Adam Przybyl

Investigations Editor Jim Daley

Senior Editors Martha Bayne

Christopher Good

Olivia Stovicek

Sam Stecklow

Alma Campos

Jocelyn Martinez-Rosales

Community Builder Chima Ikoro

Public Meetings Editor Scott Pemberton

Interim Lead

Visuals Editor Shane Tolentino

Director of Fact Checking: Ellie Gilbert-Bair Fact Checkers: Bridget Craig

Jim Daley

Alani Oyola

Kateleen Quiles

Rubi Valentin

Layout Editor Tony Zralka

Executive Director Malik Jackson

Office Manager Mary Leonard

Advertising Manager Susan Malone

Webmaster Pat Sier

The Weekly publishes online weekly and in print every other Thursday. We seek contributions from all over the city.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:

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IN CHICAGO

Trump tries to sell immigrants on self-deportation

Would you uproot your existence and move to a different country for $1,000? That’s the gamble the Trump administration is hoping millions of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers make in the latest development of its mass deportation agenda.

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that undocumented immigrants who used the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Home app to prove they’d left the United States and returned to their home countries would receive $1,000. The announcement came with several other promises, including that undocumented immigrants who indicated on the CBP Home app that they were planning to self-deport would be “deprioritized” from removal actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and that immigrants who self-deported “may” be able to re-enter the country legally in the future.

Fake news? Like many of the claims coming from Trump and his administration, this “deal” should be approached with skepticism. The American Immigration Lawyers Association called the proposal a “deeply misleading and unethical trick” because it “gives people the impression there are no consequences, such as being barred from returning in the future.”

Taking up the offer may lead to worse consequences in the immigration system. For immigrants who are in removal proceedings and have a scheduled day in court, missing a court appearance because they’ve self-deported could lead to an automatic deportation order anyway, barring them from entering again. For those who have applied for asylum or other forms of immigration relief, leaving the country would likely count as abandoning their asylum claims, in which case they’d need to restart the process in the future.

There’s no guarantee that anybody who leaves the country will actually get $1,000. Immigrants have to have already left the country to even apply for the funds. Nothing in the announcement suggests that the federal government would be legally bound to pay up.

By submitting information through the CBP app, undocumented immigrants may be providing the government with information that will make it easier to deport them or their relatives, and to prevent them from returning to the country in the future.

At the heart of this announcement is the effort to make carrying out mass deportations cheaper. DHS estimates it costs over $17,000 to deport one person, and the Trump administration is pushing Congress to appropriate more funding for ICE. Conservative estimates by the American Immigration Council tally the cost of carrying out mass deportations in the tens of billions of dollars every year. Ultimately, Trump is hoping he can convince immigrants—and citizens—to comply with his agenda by self-deporting, cooperating with ICE, and accepting unconstitutional attacks on immigration law and due process.

IN THIS ISSUE

lawsuit accuses sheriff of retaliation over fraud investigation

A senior investigator claims she was reassigned after she found proof of widespread misconduct.

max blaisdell 4

public meetings report

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.

scott pemberton and documenters 6

kenwood oakland community organization launches senior tenants bill of rights

The proposal to beef up housing protections for older adults came at the organization’s sixty-year anniversary celebration.

marc monaghan, hyde park herald 7 shelter at heart of hyde park debate helps residents raise children and integrate

The former Best Western, with support from religious nonprofits, has been a crucial source of stability for asylum seekers and people experiencing homelessness. zoe pharo, jacqueline serrato.............. 8

thousands condemn trump administration in may day march

Labor leaders, activists, and Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke at the demonstration.

jim daley ................................................ 10

miles de personas marchan en contra de trump el primero de mayo Líderes sindicales, activistas y el alcalde Brandon Johnson hablaron en la manifestación. por jim daley

traducido por jacqueline serrato 12

the product of immigrants

A new generation of local young Latine artists use their art to support and advocate for immigrant rights. alonso vidal 14

homecourt collective aims to build community, one cup at a time Miyagi Records’ new resident coffee shop offers a “homecourt advantage.”

layla brown-clark 17

eve l. ewing and friends unite to buy build coffee

Author and scholar Eve L. Ewing, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist trina reynolds-tyler and media-based organizer Andrea Faye Hart will take over the shop in June.

maxwell evans, block club chicago 19

Public Meetings Report

illustration by Holley Appold/South Side Weekly

A recap of select open meetings at the local, county, and state level.

BY SCOTT PEMBERTON AND DOCUMENTERS

March 27

“Hey hey, ho ho, pretextual stops have to go!” chanted attendees after a meeting of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) During the meeting, several public commenters, some of whom identified themselves as members of Free2Move, spoke against pretextual Chicago Police Department (CPD) traffic stops. Critics contend such stops are conducted as a pretext for police to search for unrelated items. Two Commission members also commented on the stops. Aaron Gottlieb said that if traffic stops are not included in the department’s Consent Decree, the Commission should continue playing a role in creating a policy. Sandra Wortham said that the Commission will ask for public feedback as it develops a traffic-stop policy. The Commission approved a proposal to allow closed meetings and an amendment to its bylaws to limit public comment during meetings to agenda items or other planned discussion topics. The amendment is designed to limit or prevent disruptive audience behavior.

April 14 & 16

The Green Social Housing Ordinance, which is aimed at addressing Chicago’s affordable housing crisis amid uncertain federal funding, did not come up for a vote either at the April 14 meeting of the Chicago City Council Joint Committee: Finance; Housing and Real Estate or two days later at the committee’s April 16 meeting. Council members said they needed more time to get the details right. If enacted, the ordinance would establish an independent non-profit entity responsible for ensuring the creation of energy-efficient, mixed-income developments that include permanently affordable housing. Council members shared concerns about the structure and oversight of the nonprofit, which is why the committees met together twice. The housing committee and the city’s Law Department amended the ordinance to address these concerns. One change, for example, mandates that the independent non-profit must cooperate with the Chicago Office of the Inspector General in any investigations, audits, or reviews. “That solves one set of problems,” said Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Remaining are questions about the application and enforcement of the city’s ethics rules, she said. Still, alderperson Nicole Lee (11th) successfully moved to keep the ordinance in committee, saying the Council “just got this substitute . . . and I’m not comfortable voting on this currently.” Funding is already set aside in connection with the 2024 Housing and Economic Development Bond, which established a $135 million revolving loan fund for green social housing.

April 17

“We’ve never seen anything this cataclysmic or this big before in terms of a crisis in mass transit,” said Kirk Dillard, chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority Board of Directors, speaking on an impending budget shortfall and subsequent massive service cuts. At its meeting, the board learned that a projected $771 million shortfall for the 2026 fiscal year could lead to a forty percent reduction in public transportation services in the Chicago area. Whether that happens hinges on securing state funding by May 31, which marks the end of the spring session of the state’s General Assembly. The effect of the funding hole on Chicago workers could be stark: one in five, or twenty percent, could lose access to buses and trains, RTA officials say. Cuts will hit Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra, and Pace lines, drastically limiting services within Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, RTA officials have said. Some or all service for at least four of the eight CTA train lines could be suspended, and access to more than fifty stations could be curtailed or eliminated. It could also mean eliminating up to seventy-four of 127 bus routes, leaving some 500,000 CTA riders without convenient bus service, officials said. Nearly three thousand transit workers would be laid off. Service cuts could result in the loss of $2.6 billion in wages for CTA users annually because they couldn’t get to their jobs easily—or could lose their jobs, officials said. With these cuts, the CTA would go from one of the largest transit systems in the country to having fewer bus routes than Madison, Wisconsin, a city with a fraction of Chicago’s population, RTA officials said. To pressure the legislature to take action, the RTA launched the “Save Transit Now” campaign in an effort to inform the public and encourage Chicagoans to contact their state representatives.

April 24

At its meeting, the Chicago Public Schools Chicago Board of Education voted 19-0 (with one abstention) to approve a teachers contract through June 2028. The contract is worth $1.5 billion over four years. The move came after nearly a year of negotiations, and the terms are retroactive to July 2024. Teachers are to receive four-to-five percent cost-of-living wage increases in each of the four years as well as reduced class sizes and additional funding for extracurricular programs. Hundreds of additional staff positions are planned. “This contract fairly rewards our excellent work of our educators, makes investments that are financially responsible for the district, and keeps the best interest of our students at the forefront,” outgoing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said. The board also approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 budget to fund the contract’s first year by allocating $139 million in additional Tax Increment Financing (TIF) surplus funding. “Some combination of increased revenue and reduced expenses will need to be reached to balance this budget,” Martinez said. Due to the district’s projected $529 million budget gap, CPS has launched a campaign to advocate for the state to increase evidence-based formula funding as well as funding for nutrition, special education, transportation services across Illinois, and support for early childhood education. “We have a contract that did not require a strike,” said Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates. “That is a significant development.”

This information was collected and curated by the Weekly in large part using reporting from City Bureau’s Documenters at documenters.org.

so that they can be successful, so their rate of success can be higher when they become independent.”

For the Rojas, the shelter’s services and classes were invaluable.

"The treatment was excellent, truly excellent,” Rocío Rojas said. “The organizations were very attentive. They provided many resources for us to learn, educate ourselves and integrate into the society that we will begin to belong to.”

Rocío Rojas said she and her family took part in English lessons and classes to learn about the local culture. Sometimes they took field trips to museums, where the Rojas learned about Chicago’s founding and the Great Fire of 1871.

“We love Chicago,” Rocío Rojas said.

The Rojas said that residents also get referred to other organizations that offer legal support or case management. Carlos and Rocío Rojas were referred to Centro Romero on the North Side, where they applied for their work permits.

It was during one of those acculturation lessons where Carlos Rojas heard about a construction job from a classmate.

“I learned on the job. The [boss] said I didn’t need experience or anything, just a desire to learn,” Carlos Rojas said. “And it went very well...I had to do construction work, put up drywall, sometimes I cleaned houses and sometimes I remodeled bathrooms.”

But he liked the pay: “It was a little something I could save to eat out and do things” with the family. Now he has a better-paying job doing car transmission repairs.

Rocío Rojas first did housekeeping at a downtown hotel, but then got a job at the Little Village nonprofit SER Central States, where she works helping other migrants.

During afternoon or weekend walks that the family would take outside the shelter and around the block, Yuliana identified Kenwood Academy nearby. When reps from Chicago Public Schools showed up at the shelter, she told them she was interested in enrolling there, and although they told her “it’s complicated,” she filled out the application and got in.

Yuliana said she felt welcomed at her new school. She said the learning environment is more accepting than in

schools she had attended in Colombia and Venezuela.

“Even though I’m from another country, even though I speak another language…It’s like people don’t treat you differently,” Yuliana said. “They try to teach you things.”

Since the shelter opened up to Chicago’s homeless population, New Life has expanded its programming. New offerings include weekly volunteer opportunities at food pantries to help expose residents to “working situations without the commitment.”

“Because maybe they’re going through something, or PTSD, or any trauma,” said Jauregui. “This can slowly integrate them back into working.”

Given that almost half of the shelter’s residents are children, a lot of the new programming is geared towards kids.

Millbrooks’ children just wrapped an eight-week course in partnership with the Chicago Cubs, where Chicago-area coaches taught them how to play baseball. It culminated in students attending a Cubs game late last month, where Millbrooks’ daughters, Jamiya and Jameyla, were chosen to walk out onto the field.

Her two youngest children told the Herald that they’re eager to play more sports.

When asked what they like to do for fun, the second-grader and sixth-grader paused briefly before answering excitedly: “baseball” and “basketball.”

Neighborhood tensions persist

Today, more than 400 migrants and permanent residents live at the Best Western shelter. But opposition has far from quieted down.

Currently, the shelter is jointly operated by the city and state. Come July 1, officials have said, operations will transfer entirely to the city, though it will continue to receive some state funding.

But for the past few months, a group of residents going by the name Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community have been working to pump the brakes on these plans before they become permanent.

In March, the group launched an online petition calling on residents to “protect Hyde Park-Kenwood” and oppose the shelter, which has since garnered more than 1,200 signatures. In it, the authors once again take issue with elected officials’ unilateral decision to make the shelter permanent, and argue it could “significantly impact our quality of life, safety, infrastructure, and property values.”

In a recent community meeting hosted by the group, attendees presented a catalog of grievances about the shelter and its residents. They presented lurid photos— including of public urination, street vending without permits, trash, rodents, and large crowds—to back up their claims.

“The city never engaged with our community,” Cathy Perry, one of the event’s organizers, said at that meeting. Elected officials, she argued, were “shifting the landscape of our neighborhood and quality

of life overnight.”

Other attendees also alleged an increase in crimes such as drug dealing and prostitution, though these claims were unsubstantiated, and descended into screeds against ‘illegal immigrants.’

In response to neighbors’ complaints, local state Rep. Curtis Tarver (D-25th) has joined the push to stop the shelter.

In a March letter to the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, Tarver wrote that the $91.5 million in Gov. JB Pritzker’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal for the initiative should be withheld until “neighborhood concerns are addressed and a plan inclusive of all voices is solidified.” As of press time, May 5, budget negotiations are still underway.

While the city and state work to finalize these plans, Hyde Park Neighbors Preserving Community has turned its attention to raising funds to retain an attorney to file a lawsuit and injunction.

Amid this opposition, the Rojas left the shelter and moved into a residence nearby. Through Facebook groups and searching on Zillow, they found a landlord who rented them an apartment and didn’t ask them about their immigration status.

The family said they haven’t directly experienced discrimination, but have heard the complaints about the shelter.

The opposition "is a little scary, the whole situation is a little scary,” Rocío Rojas said. “Sometimes we go out feeling a little afraid because we don’t know what we might face if we leave the house.”

Carlos Rojas believes that the shelters kept the migrant surge from becoming a bigger crisis in Chicago.

“People would have to beg for money or sleep on the streets to survive,” Carlos Rojas said. “Not everyone who is in a shelter or comes from a shelter is a bad person. Nor because they’re from Latin America or because they’re migrants.” ¬

Zoe Pharo is a staff writer at the Hyde Park Herald

Jacqueline Serrato is the editor-in-chief of the Weekly

Loop workers and tourists stopped to watch and take pictures of the march as it passed. Some even joined in, while others shouted and pumped their fists in support. As demonstrators moved along Washington Ave., a young Latina woman wiped tears from her face as she watched.

“It’s [about] the rights that any person who steps foot in the United States has always been afforded to,” said Jorge Rios, a twenty-four-year-old hotel steward who watched the march pass by on Jackson Ave. with his coworkers. “There are insane justifications that are being used to essentially carry out unconstitutional activities.” He added that he’s currently

“doing okay” financially, but that he expects that tariffs imposed by Trump will make things worse in coming months. “All we can do now is course-correct and hopefully return democracy back to the United States,” he added.

Juan Pedro, a thirty-two-year-old tourist who was visiting Chicago from Medellín, Colombia, stopped to watch the march pass by on Michigan Ave. He said that immigrant labor is “critical for the country to function” and that mass deportations would ultimately cause problems for Trump. “Immigrants have done so much for the [United States],” he said, “He’s being very hard on the people

who helped build the country.” He added that tariffs are “not going to help a world [economy] as globalized as ours.”

On Saturday, activists capped off the week’s activities with a Black and Brown Unity rally and march at Union Park. Representatives of CAARPR, Organized Communities Against Deportations, and other organizations addressed a crowd of about 150 people before demonstrators marched down Washington Ave. Speakers aired grievances with the Trump administration as well as Illinois democrats they said needed to do more to oppose the president and support working people.

Near the Petrillo bandshell on May

Day, Rashida, an older Black woman who declined to give her last name or age, said she’d come from the West Side to protest because things “aren’t looking good.”

“All the things Trump and his regime is doing, we’re in fascism. We’re already in fascism, and before we turn around, it could be too late to do anything about it,” she said. “It’s all out of control, and a big storm is coming.” ¬

Jim Daley is the Weekly’s investigations editor.

The Product of Immigrants

A new generation of local young Latine artists use their art to support and advocate for immigrant rights.

BY ALONSO VIDAL

On January 29, Saúl Cariño-Palma, a local sonidero, or traditional cumbia DJ, hosted Tributo a los Inmigrantes—a tribute to immigrants—at The Giant Penny Whistle bar in Pilsen.

Protest posters championing immigrant rights, made by community members at a January event organized by the Ruidosa Art Collective, hung on the walls. Behind an altar with a statue of La Virgen de Guadalupe surrounded by framed photographs of his parents, Cariño-Palma, a second-generation Mexican American, shared his family’s migration story during his set.

“We are not here to harm you,” Cariño-Palma said in Spanish. “We are not hatred like those who are attacking us.”

In his first hundred days in office, President Donald Trump has instilled fear in immigrant communities, he said. His administration has promised to execute the largest mass deportation program in US history, and called Chicago “ground zero” for his anti-immigration efforts. In recent months, federal officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies have made arrests in the Chicago area, sweeping up many who don’t have criminal records. The threats and activity have caused a disruption in immigrant communities and led to this year’s Cinco de Mayo parade in Little Village being cancelled out of fear of raids.

For Cariño-Palma, twenty-six, it is essential for artists—especially those with immigrant roots—to use their voices to expand the message.

Cariño-Palma remembers the childhood mornings when his mother flooded the house with cumbia classics: “La Cumbia Del Amor,” “El Diario De Un Borracho,” and “Mentirosa”. Following his

mother’s lead while pretending to be the artist, Cariño-Palma would dance around the house. “Through Cumbia, we unite,” Cariño-Palma said.

Years later, his love for music led him to become a sonidero. Each sonidero has a unique voice, he said. Some use phrases to be identified, others use pre-recorded sounds, and others, like Cariño-Palma, make audiences reflect through their life stories

As the flavor of cumbia swept through the bar and the attendees danced, Cariño Palma lowered the speakers' volume and readied his voice. His parents’ journey to the U.S. took over a month, he said. They faced many challenges and narrowly avoided a robbery along their journey. “Hold my hand,” Cariño-Palma said his mother told his father in the face of danger, as they quietly prayed La Magnifica, a Catholic prayer believed to be first recited by the Virgin Mary that is often used during Mexican religious events. The robbers didn’t see her or the

migrants that traveled with them.

The day after they arrived in the United States, it was Cariño-Palma’s father’s birthday; they didn’t celebrate, as he had to go out and work. He needed to provide for his family, Cariño-Palma said.

“I wouldn’t be here playing these cumbias; I wouldn’t be here talking with you if my parents hadn’t made the decision to be in this country,” he said. “I think it’s important that these stories are told so they’re not forgotten, so we don’t forget the privilege we have because it is a privilege to be here.”

Cariño-Palma is part of a young generation of first and second-generation artists who use their work to advocate for change amidst the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric against immigrants.

At Cariño-Palma’s event, an oil painting titled El Migrante Indocumentado by local artist Alexis Patiño was raffled; he donated it for the cause.

Patiño used tortilla packaging from El Milagro as inspiration for his piece because

of its importance and recognizability among Latines. The popular local tortilla business has been around since the 1950s; its employees walked out in protest against ongoing poor working conditions in 2021 as the Weekly reported. In the painting, Chatito, the character Patiño portrays in most of his work, prepares tortillas. Above him, written in Spanish: America no es nada sin el migrante indocumentado. “America is nothing without the undocumented migrant.”

Patiño said he named the character Chatito after the nickname his mother gave him as a kid. “I'm not 100% sure, but from what I've heard, it means 'flat face,'” he said. Chatito’s appearance is inspired by the Muñecas Lelé. The handmade dolls are made by the Otomí—an Indigenous group from central Mexico, where Patiño’s family is from—and are dressed in their traditional clothing and long braids.

Patiño arrived in the United States with his parents when he was two years old. Although Spanish was always spoken at home, maintaining his language and culture outside his home country wasn’t easy.

For Patiño, art has always been a way to stay connected to the land from which he was uprooted. “Having these dolls that are from Mexico, seeing the culture brought over here to the United States, it's something really nice,” he said. “By having Chatito here, it makes me feel like I still have a little bit of Mexico here with me.”

The Patiño family business, a convenience store in Aurora, sells a variety of Latin American clothing and goods. The Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Colombians who make up their customer base all come for a piece of home, Patiño said. Over the years, Patiño has transformed the backroom of the business into his studio

Homecourt Collective Aims to Build Community, One Cup at a Time

Miyagi Records’ new resident coffee shop offers a “homecourt advantage.”

BY LAYLA BROWN-CLARK

If you drop into Miyagi Records on East Garfield Boulevard, you’ll be greeted by rows of record crates. Tucked in the back, you’ll find Homecourt Collective, a pop-up coffee shop that opened at Miyagi this past January. As Miyagi’s current coffee residents, cofounders Melissa Del Carmen and Alex Myung brought Homecourt Collective to Washington Park as a means to share the goodness coffee has given them with the world.

Having day jobs as a filmmaker and mental health therapist, respectively, Myung and Del Carmen wanted a project that they could work on together and enjoy without pressure. That thing happened to be coffee.

said her father has introduced her to a variety of coffee beans and brews, and she found an affinity for the conversation that coffee opens between two people. Myung, as a filmmaker, said coffee shops gave him a place to create and work, do bills, journal, and get counsel.

“Coffee shops and coffee in general were a safe space for us,” Del Carmen said. “When we kept doing it, we were thinking, like ‘How do we share this with other people?’ and also give the message that you can try things. We always kept taking the next step to what it would look like to share our coffee and sell coffee beans."

The two started Homecourt Collective in 2023 with a series of popups at places like Navy Pier and Avondale Music Hall, which allowed them to explore different seasonal drinks and menu items from ube lattes to espresso mules. In summer 2024, the two hosted a pop-up at Young Chicago Authors, where they offered free drip coffee to everyone who dropped in. But it wasn’t until late last year, when they heard Miyagi Records was seeking a new coffee resident, that Myung and Del Carmen found a long-term home for Homecourt.

“We did a cold call and just pitched ourselves to them. The second we called them, we got a response, and the energy was awesome,” Myung said. It “was contagious and gave us the confidence— like, let’s create something we could be proud of and build community through too.”

Miyagi and Homecourt were perfectly matched. Both the shop and coffee residency fell in line with their missions to function as a space for community members to connect and

convene.

we realized how hard folks ride for their neighborhood here. For them to welcome us and have us be a part of the community is a huge blessing,” Myung said.

Del Carmen and Myung are open to the possibilities of how their coffee residency could grow into something more.

“We are very open to what the future could hold. We have big dreams [about] where Homecourt Collective could go. Perhaps, possibly one day, it would be a huge blessing to have our brick-and-

mortar,” Del Carmen said. “We’re kind of like step-by-step and grateful where we are. So whatever the pace looks like,

Homecourt Collective / Miyagi Record Shop, 307 E. Garfield Blvd. Open Thursday–Saturday, 10am–3pm. instagram.com/ homecourtcollective/ ¬

Grace Hauck is an investigative reporter with Illinois Answers Project’s State Investigations Team.

CHICAGO

MATHER + SILVER FOX CAFÉ POP-UP

Martin Luther King Community Center 4314 S. Cottage Grove Avenue | May 13 | 12:00–2:30 p.m.

FEED YOUR MIND, BODY & SOUL

AKARAMA Foundation | 6220 S. Ingleside Avenue May 22 | 9:30–11:30 a.m

WELLNESS AT THE COV New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church 754 E. 77th Street | Mondays–Thursdays | 9:30 a.m.–2:00