What another six years of a Maduro presidency in Venezuela means for migrants and Chicago

It’s been a tense few days for Venezuelans in Chicago who are glued to their phones watching conflict unfold between protesters and security forces in their home country after long-time president Nicolás Maduro was declared winner in Sunday’s disputed election.

For many migrants here, the conflict means one thing: They won’t be going home anytime soon.

“We’ve lost the hope of going back to our country,” Edwin Leal said this week in Spanish outside a city-run shelter on the Near West Side where he has been staying since arriving from Venezuela. “With the same president, the situation in Venezuela will most likely stay the same or get worse.”

Under Maduro’s regime, Venezuela's economy has plummeted and millions of citizens have fled over the last decade. The growing exodus of people has contributed to Chicago’s migrant crisis, with tens of thousands of asylum seekers bused or flown here since August 2022, primarily by the Texas governor. This has strained social safety nets not only in Chicago but in many other U.S. cities and countries in South and Central America, including in Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

Contemplating another six year term under the unpopular Maduro regime is hard to process for the millions of Venezuelans who have been transient for years.

“Venezuelans are mourning,” said Keila Rodriguez, 43, in Spanish. She left Venezuela in 2022, lived in Peru for more than a year and is now living at a city-run shelter on Ogden Avenue with her grandchild and her daughter. “Some people even cried when they got the news about Maduro’s unexpected win.”

Rodríguez, who worked in sales and also worked as a community organizer in Venezuela, said she has canceled her plans to return home. At some point in Venezuela she found herself with nothing to eat except mangoes from trees on the streets. She can’t return to that.

“Six years — it's such a long time,” said Michael Albertus, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. "If you're a migrant, in some sense, it's a life. You put down roots somewhere and you start investing, you start building a life. It becomes very difficult to quickly reverse that.”

Maduro’s victory was announced on Monday despite accusations of election fraud by opposition candidate Edmundo González, who has also claimed victory. World leaders have urged the Maduro regime to show a full breakdown of the results, but experts say that’s unlikely without a transparent institutional mechanism to vet election results. Earlier this week, news reports detailed accounts of clashes turning deadly, and hundreds of people getting arrested.

As Venezuelans brace for another Maduro term, many neighboring countries and U.S. cities will likely keep experiencing the ripple effects.

“[Chicago] is an international city and so it has to deal with these international issues,” Albertus said. “If Maduro isn't pushed out one way or another in the next couple weeks, then I would say, ‘prepare to integrate people into your city and into your state.’ ”

Locally, that also means being ready for an influx of migrants during the Democratic National Convention next month and beyond. Other advocates say it means thinking about long-term solutions to the city's housing crisis.

Albertus said the chaos caused by the recent presidential elections is a window into what happens in the absence of a strong democracy.

“Once you lose a democracy, it's not easy to get it back,” Albertus said, adding that Venezuela had a stable democracy for decades. But that began to shift with Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor, and his efforts to centralize power.

Sitting outside the shelter where she looks after her grandson and another migrant boy, Rodriguez hopes Venezuelans back home continue to push until Maduro is no longer in power.

“I have faith that people in Venezuela will keep fighting the election outcome,” Rodriguez said, adding that for many years in Caracas she tried to organize people against Maduro’s government. As a result, she says she was harassed, threatened and persecuted. She eventually left Venezuela to reunite with her family in Peru.

After that, they all began a journey together and ended up in Chicago last spring. Miles away from her homeland, and with no prospects of going back, all she wants now is to find a sense of stability and a place she can call home.

Adriana Cardona-Maguigad covers immigration for WBEZ. Follow her on X @AdrianaCardMag.