Chicago immigrant mother Darian recounts painful journey through NBC Chicago

Clinging to her faith and despite the horror stories she had heard about going through the Darien jungle, Glendy Castillo from Venezuela, who was part of her country’s army, decided to pack her suitcase and head into the desert with her two daughters and started with $200. His trip to America.

“Because I didn’t know anything, I held on to my faith and prayed,” he said. The now-immigrant woman says it took her two months to get to America, during which she spent six days in the jungle, wandering, listening to animals and seeing people abandoning the American dream.

“We saw the dead, rotting corpses, the smell, which was not the same as living. What you see in it, I saw a lot of people go crazy.

He says he got lost on one of his tours. “We were confused with so many footprints not knowing where to hold. You looked here, there were tracks coming and going,” he said.

In October 2022, Glendy and her daughters moved to El Paso, from where they were bussed to Chicago.

The three Venezuelans were part of an estimated more than 13,000 immigrants from Texas received by city and local agencies to send them to police stations or shelters. The rest of your journey begins here.

Initially receiving help from the Salvation Army, she was then sent to a hotel in Des Plaines, where she stayed for four months while her daughters Nicole, 16, and Camilla, 11, started school.

Nicole Andre Ruiz Castillo said: “I’m afraid I don’t fit in, it was a bit sad not having your friends before.

“I was very surprised that the buses are yellow and different from Venezuela, where they are normal buses or walking or cycling, but those yellow buses make you feel cool.”

According to Glendy, in the first months her daughters had bilingual teachers who explained the activities, but now they don’t; Even so, they still managed to stand out in their classes despite not being fully proficient in English.

Nicole received recognition for being the best in her class, and Camilla drew a drawing that won a contest and was sent to NASA, they say.

The family now says they are stable, though Glendy says they have rented a mobile home since February and have started an application for asylum with the help of the Rincón Family Services organization. She has a work permit to live on financial assistance from the city.

“Here you have to fight, if there is help, but you can’t be in charge of the public, you can’t come under the impression that the state will give you everything,” he said.

Despite the hardships of their journey, family love and faith in God have kept them together, and they say they have no regrets in calling Chicago their new home.