At a November public meeting, a Chicago Police Dept. sergeant revealed unsafe and unhealthy conditions at the 11th District police station on the West Side.

Since August of 2022, over 19,000 migrants have come from the U.S. southern border to Chicago—thousands of whom are now camped out in the city's police stations and airports.

Migrants residing at a North Side police station
in November. Photo by Dave Glowacz.

According to the city of Chicago, most the migrants have come from Venezuela. What caused them to flee their homeland?

A recent report from the Great Cities Institute of the University of Iliinois at Chicago gives some clues.

The report is titled, "The Current Migrant Crisis: How U.S. Policy Toward Latin America Has Fueled Historic Numbers of Asylum Seekers." Its author, Juan González, is a senior research fellow at the institute—and a co-host of the long-running "Democracy Now!" news broadcast.

In these excerpts from the 17-page report, González describes the U.S. government's economic pressures on the nation of Venezuela:

"In late 2014 President Obama signed an executive order—not publicly released until March 2015—in which he declared that conditions in Venezuela had become a national emergency and an 'extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.' The order never spelled out exactly how a small South American country hundreds of miles away, with a standing army of only 100,000 troops, could suddenly become a threat to world’s most powerful nation. Nonetheless, Obama launched a series of economic sanctions against Venezuela."

"His successor Donald Trump followed in 2017 with even broader sanctions which closed off Venezuela's access to Western debt financing, forced many U.S. and foreign companies to leave the country, and crippled its oil industry, the Venezuelan government’s main source of revenue. Trump even froze the assets in 2019 of CITGO Petroleum, a U.S. company that is wholly owned by Venezuela’s state oil company. CITGO’s refineries and gas stations in the U.S. are enormously valuable. In 2022 they generated . . . more than $2.8 billion in profit, but Trump’s actions effectively prevented any of that money from reaching the Venezuelan government and its people."

"Meanwhile, the White House joined with the United Kingdom to freeze Venezuelan gold reserves stored in the Bank of England worth an estimated $2 billion."

"The effect of these massive U.S. sanctions caused the Venezuelan state to lose between $17 billion and $31 billion in oil revenues between 2017 and 2020. Given that Venezuela normally imports 90 percent of its pharmaceuticals and 70 percent of its food, the loss of such a vast quantity of U.S. dollars from its shrinking oil exports has crippled its economy."

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben evaluated audio from September, 2023 meetings of the Chicago City Council.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben probed audio from 2023's May meetings of the full Chicago City Council.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben heard and weighed parts of the March 15, 2023 meeting of the full Chicago City Council.

In an audio interview, First Ward Ald. Daniel La Spata described the training needs of newly-elected City Council members.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben listened to and evaluated meetings of the Chicago City Council that took place in October and November of 2022.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben heard and assessed parts of the September, 2022 meeting of the full Chicago City Council.

Amid residents' complaints about intrusive festivals in Douglass Park, another concern has emerged: motor vehicles blocking the area's protected bike lanes.

The city of Chicago has proposed at new tax-increment financing district south of the Stevenson expressway, west of South Cicero Ave.

An open-government bonanza revealed e-mail and text messages to and from Mayor Lori Lightfoot spanning the years 2019 to 2021.

In this audio piece, housing specialists and others talk about how the creation of low-income housing in Chicago is tied to higher-income apartments—pursuant to a new Illinois incentive for developers.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben examined July meetings of the Chicago City Council.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben listen to audio highlights of 2021's March meeting of the full Chicago City Council.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Dave and Ben deconstructed audio from October 2020's meetings of the Chicago City Council finance committee, and the full council.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Dave and Ben give their persepectives on audio from the July 2020 meeting of the full Chicago City Council.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben and Dave listened to audio from the June 2020 meeting of the full Chicago City Council—and part of a "confidential" conference between the mayor and alderman.

Funding for Mayor Lori Lightfoot's INVEST South/West project moved to full City Council approval, but with aldermanic hurdles along the way.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben and Dave discussed the City Council's dramatic Jan. 2020 debate of a resolution regarding businesses having LGBT owners—and other council actions.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben and Dave discussed the City Council's divided approval of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's 2020 budget.