Michel Sandoval has never celebrated Thanksgiving before, but Thursday evening she knows exactly what she’ll be giving thanks for — family, good health and all the people who helped her and her partner, Luis Alfonso, in their long journey from Venezuela.
“I’m grateful God has always been with us, hasn’t left us, and thanks to God we’ve always found good people on our trip here,” said Sandoval, 21.
That list includes the family in Mexico that put her and Luis up for a month last spring and Ruth Lamour, an Austin resident who has been hosting Sandoval and other migrants in her house and will be hosting their first Thanksgiving.
More than 25,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago in the past year, bused or flown to the city. Without work authorizations, many have been left dependent on the city and others from the Chicago area.
Despite the difficulties they have faced, many are grateful to be here and for the help they have received.
Sandoval and her partner arrived in May and stayed at the Austin District police station for two months. They then moved to a downtown shelter for about a month before briefly moving into a Bellwood home and then Lamour’s home in Austin.
Lamour, a retiree who lives near the Austin station, began hosting migrants at her three-bedroom home in June.
On Thursday, she’s planning to have some of those same migrants join her and her son for a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner.
“Thanksgiving has always been a big holiday for my family for generations,” said Lamour, recalling dinners at the family home in western Illinois. “I like to go around the table and ask what each person is thankful for and, almost always, it’s family and new friends.”
Lamour met many of the new friends who will join her Thanksgiving Day at the police station when she began volunteering there in May. In addition to Sandoval, Alfonso and another migrant living in the house, she’s expecting a few she knows staying in city shelters and others who have moved into homes near her own.
Since opening up her home, the menu at shared meals, she said, tends to be Venezuelan fare, but for the American holiday they decided to go traditional.
For the 14 people expected to attend, the meal will include two 15-pound turkeys, cornbread casserole, brussel sprouts, salad and multiple pies.
The pumpkin pie was ready by Wednesday afternoon and she planned to spend the evening peeling apples for apple crisp and potatoes for mashed potatoes and gravy. Her son planned to start cooking the turkeys in the evening, roasting them low and slow overnight in the oven.
Some of the others joining live nearby, including Wilmer Morales, who met Lamour at the Austin station and now lives in the neighborhood with a host he met through Lamour.
“Above all, I’m grateful to be alive,” said Morales, 30, recounting the number of dead bodies he saw on the trip to the U.S., especially in crossing the Darien Gap, a jungle dividing Colombia from Panama, where he said he saw over a dozen dead.
Despite the hardships of the journey, Morales said he would make it again.
“It’s worth it, if you see where we’re coming from,” he said. “In Venezuela there’s no Thanksgiving because there’s nothing on the table.”
Johan Delgado, who moved into Lamour’s home over the summer, said he left his home city of Barinas, Venezuela, after local gangs began to harass and threaten him.
He escaped and made it to Chicago in May.
“Thanks to God for us being here, to meet this woman who is offering us this opportunity to stay here,” said Delgado, 40. “We went through a lot — hunger, mistreatment. I’ve seen people begging for food. But you have to keep going.”
Filing immigration paperwork and keeping up with appointments has been difficult, but at the end of it, he hopes he can have a “stable” life again.
“Sometimes life knocks you down,” he said. “But sometimes it lifts you up too.”
Michael Loria is a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
