The issues arising from thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into Chicago from around the world have united many in the city’s black and Hispanic communities, who blame the government for the resultant social problems, including crime.
Local citizens say that their neighborhoods are less safe, their schools are overcrowded, already scarce jobs are now even harder to come by, and the distribution of municipal resources favors illegal immigrants.
“My beef is with the government, not with the migrants,” said Hector, a Hispanic pastor from Brighton Park on the city’s south side.
“There are a lot of injustices. We do not see equality. The migrants are given everything. The money is coming from our pockets.”
The city has provided housing for the new arrivals, ranging from large tents and warehouses to hotels scattered throughout the city and in some suburbs.
Chaplain Antonio, who ministers to immigrants, has observed criminal gang colors, signs, and emblems among them as he greets the newcomers on their arrival in Chicago.
“We are not against legitimate immigration, but this problem should have been stopped at the border,” he said.
Antonio also said the government is favoring the new noncitizen immigrants over people who are already here.
Voices From the Community
On a recent night, The Epoch Times met up with Tee and X (not their real names), two black men well-acquainted with life on Chicago’s mean streets, for a drive through some of the South Side’s deadliest neighborhoods.
X called the area “Cowboy Land,” where anything can happen at any time.
Driving through blocks of dilapidated houses and boarded-up storefronts, the pair pointed to street corner after street corner where someone had been shot to death recently.
X, who survived gang involvement well into his early 30s, said he can name 100 people killed in street violence.
Despite all that, he said, “I love my city. I wouldn’t leave. South Chicago is my land.”
Cautious in word and action, X avoided prison. Today, he lives in a small house in a neat, working-class area and works in construction. He is a single parent raising two sons.
X said he has nothing against the Venezuelans who make up the largest segment of the new arrivals. “They’re just trying to make a living,” he said.
Tee, a middle-aged elder statesman of Chicago’s gang and street life who is no stranger to the prison system, said: “Our life is hell. People are dying over here.”
Tee pointed to a woman he knew on the sidewalk. “You see that homeless woman? She’s been a resident of Hyde Park her entire life. She is a United States citizen. She fell bad on her luck. She’ll be sleeping outside tonight,” he said.
“If she were an illegal Venezuelan, she would show up at the entrance to a luxury hotel downtown or on Lake Michigan and be taken right in. They are given everything.
“When I need rent assistance, I can’t get it. But if I am Venezuelan, no problem.
“We have no problem with them being here. The problem is, they’re living here free.
“This is a sanctuary city. Yet my people live in poverty.”
According to Tee, the rising demand for housing will only get worse.
“The illegals need somewhere to live. They are not going to stay in those shelters forever,” he said.
“Some Venezuelans are squatting in run-down and abandoned residential buildings. They take them over, and nothing happens to them. They are immune from the law.
“If a black man has an old felony conviction, when he goes to apply for a benefit, he’s told, ‘Sorry, you have a prior felony that disqualifies you.’
“Yet thousands of illegals come here with no background check. Who knows what they did back home? Yet, they are signed up right away.”
Like Hector, Tee sees the government, not the Venezuelans, as the problem.
“I believe the illegal migrants are brought in by the government to displace the blacks,” he said.
“They are bringing into already impoverished cities like Chicago poor, military-age men with no women. What could go wrong?
“We’ve got no problem with people coming here the right way. What we don’t like is the government immediately handing them resources that we have to stand in line for.
“I don’t see color. I see right or wrong.”
A registered voter, Tee said he would be voting for former President Donald Trump and was strongly urging his friends to do the same.
“Trump will remove the illegal aliens from our communities,” he said.
“I like Trump. He is a felon. Everybody is against him. I like that.”
Economic Frustration
African American Pastor Dave Lowery’s ministry works out of a string of connected storefronts on the corner of 113th Street and Michigan, a rough and economically depressed section of Chicago where jobs are hard to come by.
Lowery, 67, remembers the days when there were many black-owned local businesses, whose owners taught their children to become entrepreneurs.
“We didn’t worry about jobs because we created them ourselves,” he said.
Lowery said that when the younger generation of black politicians and community leaders abandoned that tradition and those values in favor of a culture of dependency, the change fostered an unhealthy and dangerous “hatred of self” among many black residents.
“The politicians tell black women, ‘We can’t give you welfare if your man remains in the house.' That destroyed the black family and destroyed the black economic engine,” he said.
“As capital and resources dwindled, black people turned on each other for pennies. Today, I’d have to shoot somebody to defend a business in Chicago.
“Nowadays, they don’t teach the basics in our schools. Our children have not been taught to become men and women, husbands and wives.
“It’s little wonder that we don’t do the right thing as individuals.”
Lowery is worried that the influx of illegal immigrants into the schools and neighborhoods could affect the black community “in ways they might not come back from.”
He spoke of the resentment black residents feel when, for example, “the city gives migrants free cars from the impound yard.”
Black community activist David Barnes added: “For some time, there has been a migration out by our people as soon as they can afford to do so. This has decimated communities such as Roseland. It is a dying community.
“The city of Chicago has to replace those people so it is relying on immigration.”
Lowery added, “The city is giving housing vouchers to illegal migrants and placing them in apartments at the rate of 55 [people] per day, while black citizens are struggling for their very existence.”
Unfair Competition and Favoritism
Morris Anderson is a licensed, bonded, and insured general contractor.
Anderson, an African American, said his once thriving business declined by 60 percent after the arrival of the migrants.
“The Venezuelans hang out at the Home Depot waiting to be hired by my competitors to work under the table for a quarter of what I pay my workers,” he said.
“Only a small number of the migrants have work permits, but that doesn’t keep them from working.”
Lowery said that the city held a special event called a “hiring hall” at an area church, but when black laborers showed up, “they were met by security and were told the event was just for the immigrants.”
“That kind of thing provokes the citizens against the illegals,” Anderson said. “It could start a civil war between us and the government over how we are being treated.”
Lowery said that the influx of thousands of foreign, military-age men into Chicago neighborhoods is like “putting a bunch of lions into a small pit and throwing in one piece of meat.
“There’s a big ongoing fight over scarce resources,” he said.
He favors Trump’s plan for mass deportation and called for the elimination of Chicago’s sanctuary city status.
He also advocates for the creation of a black financial consortium and new city projects set aside for black contractors, as ways to defuse what he said could be a “terrible summer of 2025.”
Political Realignment
Devin Jones, 38, opened a Republican campaign office at the corner of South Pulaski and 85th Street on the city’s South Side because he believes the “America first” agenda would better serve the interests and meet the needs of Chicago’s African American community.
Jones, a black Navy veteran who can trace his ancestry in the United States back to 1781, said: “I didn’t know there was anything but America first. I always thought it was our priority.
“It is a strange use of our tax dollars to support illegal immigrants within and foreign countries without, while the generational wealth of my people is being taxed away to pay for it.”
A GOP committeeman and local political activist, Jones said he noticed the infiltration of illegal immigrants into his majority-black neighborhood when he circulated various petitions door-to-door.
“Many people couldn’t sign because they were foreign nationals,” he said.
“Here they are, with no stake in the game, building a life on the shoulders of those of us who struggled for years to acquire and maintain a nice home and business.
“They get to live off of the fruits of our labor without having contributed anything.
“We are American citizens who just want to keep what we have earned.”
Jones, a college graduate born and raised on the South Side, where he still resides, understands the connection between a good education and upward mobility.
He said he became angry when he noticed a shift in the priorities of the already poor Chicago Public Schools away from meeting the needs of black students who are U.S. citizens in favor of “dual-language students.”
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