OUR EYES MET as I walked up the concrete stairs from the Chicago Water Taxi’s Michigan Avenue stop. She held up a cardboard sign, her hand on a stroller with two young girls in puffy teal jackets inside.
Alejandra, as I’ll call her, had arrived in the city with her family two weeks earlier, after a grueling journey from Venezuela by bus, car, plane, and on foot through the Darién Gap. I couldn’t catch all the details in her rapid Spanish, but I understood she was staying at a nearby migrant shelter and that she wanted to find work to pay for her mother’s medical treatment back in Venezuela.
At the end of our conversation, I gave her all the cash I had; she asked if she could have my phone number. I gave it, but as I walked away, I wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?”
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