A migrant family’s desperate journey to Chicago

Good morning, Chicago.

Esperanza Beatriz Mendez 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 a new life in Chicago.

The Mendez family 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 experienced desperation they could never have imagined.

The Tribune traveled with the family from El Paso to Chicago Union Station to gain a better understanding of what migrants might experience on the U.S. portion of their journey.

Read the full story.

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Marnie Monogue is among an increasing number of Chicago residents who’ve been unexpectedly hit with COVID-19 in recent weeks. The numbers of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the Chicago area have been slowly creeping upward as summer winds down, following a national trend and reminding people that COVID-19 is still lurking, even if it’s no longer top-of-mind.

“I had heard that there was going to be a summer surge, but it caught me by surprise,” she said.

As the bombshell federal investigation into then-House Speaker Michael Madigan was heating up two years ago, prosecutors handed Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes the ultimate free pass, albeit with one crucial string attached.

Granted immunity, Mapes was assured he would not be charged as long as he told the truth to a federal grand jury. But he allegedly blew it.

For the last two decades, Brisa Chavez, of Cicero, has found work through staffing agencies.

Like many immigrants, the single mother has been able to find work through temp agencies because they require less paperwork and less schooling than being hired by a company directly, she said.

Now, a new law aimed at strengthening legal protections for temp workers could help Chavez and others like her who are subject to low pay and exploitation because of their employment status, advocates say.

Though it was 30 years ago, Margarita Quiñones-Peña still remembers hugging her grandfather goodbye when her pregnant mother took her and her older sister by the hand to make their way to Chicago from Mexico to meet their father.

“Homecoming” is the name of the children’s book Quiñones wrote based on her story to honor her journey and to empower herself, her family and other undocumented children, she said. “I want them to know what is possible,” she said.

All of the book’s proceeds will be donated to help immigrants currently seeking asylum in Chicago, Quiñones-Peña said.

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Five years after starting the process, Dan Pettigrew finally has opened his first cannabis store in Illinois. He is the co-founder of Viola CHI with former NBA star Al Harrington, following years of operation by Viola Brands in Colorado, Michigan and other states.

Newcomers to the cannabis business have struggled to open here while state laws have allowed large multistate operators to keep the market largely to themselves, resulting in the highest prices in the nation.

Less than a mile south of the Lollapalooza festivities, the Chicago Bears held their own celebration Sunday with the annual Family Fest at Soldier Field.

The Bears practiced for a little more than two hours, and coach Matt Eberflus, defensive tackle Justin Jones and wide receiver DJ Moore addressed the media afterward. Here’s the rundown of all that happened Sunday.

A truck towing what appeared to be a pair of house trailers pulled up to Parker Elementary School on Jan. 15, 1962. The aluminum structures, ordered by the Chicago Board of Education and built by Colonial Mobile Homes Manufacturing Co. of Hammond, were unhitched and joined together, creating a “mobile classroom.”

The mobile home company’s president, Dominic Conte, was proud of the 47-by-20-foot classroom that was assembled in just 12 minutes at 6800 S. Sangamon St., in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood on the South Side.

It was put there to test the theory of Chicago Public Schools’ Superintendent Benjamin Willis that portable classrooms would be the district’s salvation.