Viviana Portero said she has heard stories from friends in Florida about police calling ICE agents on people after pulling them over while driving. She feels safer here in Chicago, a sanctuary city.
Portero is a Venezuelan refugee who came to the U.S. in 2023. Despite President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, she feels welcomed and accepted by organizations like the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance, who have been committed to providing aid, legal advice, and access to education to refugees like her.
“I was like, alright, I can breathe now,” said Portero, who is 21 years old. At first, she lived in Ecuador then Germany. She came to the U.S. to visit her sister in 2023, but the programs and assistance for refugees, like college tuition and medical coverage, convinced her to stay for what she called, “one of the best years in my life.”
The past year has seen a major shift under Trump.
Under President Nicolás Maduro’s rule, over a million Venezuelans fled to the U.S. due to corruption and economic collapse, with about 50,000 refugees settling in Chicago between 2022 and 2024. The majority arrived in busloads from Texas under Gov. Greg Abbott’s direction, overwhelming the city. Now, with the capture of Maduro, Trump has removed protections for Venezuelan refugees in an attempt to force them back out.
Current policies and actions taken
Federal databases show that, traditionally, the United States has taken in refugees from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
But of the 6,069 refugees admitted so far in fiscal year 2026, only three were from Afghanistan. The rest were white South Africans. Trump claims Afrikaners are facing racial discrimination and genocide, allowing them to enter the U.S. after months. But there is no official evidence supported by police data to back this claim.
At the same time, Afrikaners are being prioritized for entry without meeting the classifications for refugee status. The State Department is attempting to resettle Afghan veterans currently in the U.S. Their options are the Democratic Republic of Congo or returning to Afghanistan – both of which are unsafe and marked by instability and violence.
The Trump administration has capped refugee admissions at 7,500 for the 2026 fiscal year, the lowest amount in American history. That number is even lower than it was during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the United States admitted about 11,000 refugees in both 2020 and 2021.
New policies and restrictions represent the abandonment of the Refugee Act of 1980 and a long-standing history of humanitarian assistance.
The Trump administration has suspended resettlement programs. At the start of the year, the administration expanded travel and immigration bans on 39 countries. It placed a hold on all visa, green card, work permit, renewal and asylum applications for people from these countries. It also determined that refugees from some of these countries were no longer eligible for temporary protected status.
“The U.S. is a huge country and a very wealthy country. And when you take away the U.S. as an opportunity, other countries do not fill the void, do not make up the difference,” said Betsy Fisher, an immigration lawyer, lecturer of refugee law at the University of Michigan and chief strategy officer of Talent Beyond Boundaries.
“Broken By Design” and policy impacts
Fisher participated in a DePaul Migration Collaborative symposium on Friday, May 1, called “Broken By Design.” At the conference, she and other experts discussed the uncertainty and instability refugees are facing here and abroad.
The economic effects of these immigration policies are already being felt. In Illinois alone, immigrants and refugees contributed much to the economy with taxes, spending power, the labor force and entrepreneurship. Just under 30% of entrepreneurs in the state are immigrants. Refugees specifically have $3.4 billion in spending power while having paid $518 million in state and local taxes according to the American Immigration Council.
“This administration’s policies are hurting America both internationally and at home,” said Craig Mousin, a professor at DePaul’s College of Law and former immigration lawyer.
With fewer admissions and more deportations, businesses and institutions struggle, Mousin noted.
“Higher education has been impacted across the country by the difficulty of international students getting visas. The hospitality industry in Maine, agriculture, construction, healthcare, restaurants and hotels are all hurting,” he said.
DePaul is among the universities navigating budget crises and significant losses in tuition from international students.
American citizens have mixed feelings about the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
A 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center found that Americans are nearly equally split on deportation and other immigration tactics. But a large majority disapprove of ending temporary protected status for those who had it and suspending many applications for asylum.
A similar story is told in a survey conducted this year by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It found that a majority of Americans also find that Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics negatively impact the enforcement of immigration laws, law and order, public safety, the economy and trust in law enforcement.
Opinions on these policies are primarily split along partisan lines. When Chicago lacked resources to help Venezuelans who came from Texas in 2022 and 2023, members of the community stepped in to help support new arrivals.
“The amount of faith-based groups, community organizations and neighbors around police districts that came together to provide food, blankets and clothing was remarkable,” Mousin said.
Now, rather than help with resettling, they require legal assistance, he added. That includes Venezuelans whose temporary protected status and asylum cases are now in limbo.
Portero still has temporary protected status, but her asylum case won’t be heard until November 2027.
Fisher is among those trying to help refugees navigate the legal process.
“What we are distressed about is hundreds and thousands of people who have been going through a process, who are displaced and whose claims are just not being considered right now,” Fisher said. “That is a problem.”
Since Maduro is no longer in power, some Venezuelans who are in the middle of their application processes are now unsure if they will be able to receive asylum and permanent status. There is still the fear of instability upon returning to Venezuela, since other powerful figures in the country also contributed to the conditions that made Venezuelans flee, Portero said.
One of her acquaintances, who attended her own hearing for asylum, was detained by ICE and is currently being held in a detention facility after her case was denied.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s tough,” Portero said. “You don’t know if you’re going to get home every day.”
Prior to these new policies and restrictions, Mousin and Fisher expressed that there were still challenges and flaws within the immigration system,
“The system has never been perfect, but now we’re going backwards instead of working toward a more perfect union,” said Mousin.
In the future, Fisher said immigration advocates and lawmakers need to rethink the immigration system, not just bring it back to how it was prior to when Trump took office. This could include improving visa access, focusing more on employment opportunities in areas with vacancies and giving states more control.
Despite difficulties, many immigrants are fighting to stay and “showing perseverance, even if it doesn’t win everything,” Mousin said.
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