A family came to Chicago seeking asylum. He was deported. Now she wants to leave.

A young mom named Maria has been spending the long summer days waiting, looking out the window of her apartment on the South Side. The asylum seeker from Venezuela scrolls through her phone constantly, checking for the flight the government said it would put her on to return home. She’s scheduled to fly at the end of July.

Maria enrolled in President Donald Trump's new, voluntary self-deportation program. Trump is promising travel assistance and a stipend of $1,000. Maria says that, stipend or not, she just wants to go back to Venezuela.

“What I want is to leave,” Maria says in Spanish while her 2- and 6-year olds played in the family’s nearly empty apartment. Her 9-year-old lay on the floor watching a show on a small phone. “I’ve lost everything here,” the mothers says, looking around.

Maria’s husband, Marcos, was recently deported to Venezuela. He says he spent nearly three months in 10 different detention centers after being arrested in Chicago as part of a wave of detentions under Trump. At their request, WBEZ is not using their real names because they fear retaliation.

Marcos was deported to Venezuela in June. WBEZ tracked him down in Caracas. He offered a detailed account of what happened after his arrest in Chicago, including the conditions in crowded U.S. detention facilities and what federal agents can do to get people deported. Maria spoke about how her life has unraveled and why she is ready to leave.

A devastating arrest

Marcos was arrested by immigration agents in March after he dropped their kids off for school and spoke with their teachers about their report cards.

On his way out, federal agents surrounded his car. They told him they had an immigration arrest order.

Marcos says he was confused. He and his wife had been following immigration law. They had applied for asylum and had work permits and driver’s licenses.

“I thought you were arresting people with criminal offenses, I don’t have a criminal record,” Marcos said in Spanish as he recounted his experience.

Many thoughts ran through his head. His kids inside the school. The car he and Maria had just bought the day before. The life they were building in Chicago after a treacherous journey to the United States.

Like millions of people, Marcos and Maria fled Venezuela’s poverty and violence. They crossed the U.S.-Mexico border legally and had applied for asylum in 2024.

Marcos says after the arrest, the agents took him to a nearby Walmart parking lot. He was handcuffed and shackled. Then, he says they took pictures as if he had been arrested there.

This didn’t make sense to him. But immigration agencies have been sharing photos of detained immigrants on social media, where they are often accused of having criminal records.

This was the beginning of a three-month odyssey where he says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials tried repeatedly to brand him a criminal. He was questioned about gang ties, which he denied. He was asked about his tattoos — which he says are of the Atlantic ocean, a rosary and his kid’s name.

“Just because I'm from Venezuela, it doesn’t mean I belong to a gang,” he says.

But federal agents kept hunting for evidence to suggest he was breaking the law, he says.

They unlocked his phone and questioned him about transactions in his bank account.

“I told them I am DJ. I work as an Uber driver,” Marcos says. “I never had a DUI. I [told them] ‘I thought you were only deporting criminals.’”

He said he also told them he had followed the rules. He waited in Mexico for an appointment with immigration before entering the U.S. to start his asylum application. This allowed him and his wife to eventually get work permits and driver’s licenses.

Marcos said while in custody he was constantly threatened with being sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador called the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. The Trump administration sent hundreds of migrants there, including many Venezuelans, without due process.

The fear followed Marcos as law enforcement officials zigzagged him across the Midwest, the South and the Southwest. He says he was locked up in 10 facilities in six states. ICE wouldn’t confirm information about his arrest or detention but his lawyer said many immigrants are being sent to multiple facilities and locating him between transfers and communicating with ICE was extremely hard.

“I was transferred in vehicles that looked like cars to transport dogs,” Marcos said “Always shackles up to my waist, hands and feet.”

Marcos said the detention conditions were brutal. They made him sleep on metal benches with the lights on all night in Missouri. He sat on a bus all day in shackles, not knowing where he would be taken next. He didn’t have enough to eat. He was in pain without medicine, he says.

When asked about the poor conditions, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that any claim about overcrowding or “subprime conditions” is “categorically false,” and that all detainees are "provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”

About two months into his detention, Marcos’ asylum application was denied — and his last shot at staying in America.

He didn’t want to appeal. He desperately wanted out of detention. He needed to figure out a way to support his family. Marcos knew his wife was struggling to feed their kids.

But after his application was denied, he lost all hope of seeing his wife and three children any time soon.

He knew he could be deported any time, but he still feared being framed as a criminal.

In Texas, he says officials called him and another young man saying immigration officials had sent a message. “That we were with El Tren de Aragua,” Marcos says, referring to a criminal gang that originated in Venezuela, which Trump claims is invading the U.S.

Marcos says he was forced to wear a red jumpsuit, the kind they typically put on violent offenders. He remembers being told by a guard ‘I should fear you.’

His three-month odyssey took a toll on his mental health. He heard about a Venezuelan man who died by suicide in one of these detention centers. WBEZ couldn’t confirm his account, but news reports and advocates say deaths and health emergencies in detention centers have increased this year.

ICE and the Department of Justice didn’t respond to questions about any evidence they had about crimes they allege Marcos committed.

Now, back in Venezuela, Marcos is glad to be free. He video chats daily with Maria and the kids. But the family is separated and he worries about them.

Maria is alone in Chicago with three children in the apartment the couple once thought would be the start of their American dream.

Maria struggles to feed her kids

After Marcos’ arrest he was taken to a processising center in Broadview. Maria traveled there to pick up his car keys. She couldn’t see him but officials questioned her about his job, his tattoos, about whether he had gang affiliations.

That’s the day everything started to fall apart.

“I have been devastated,” Maria says in Spanish. It was March, and she was scrambling to find a babysitter so she could work the night shift at a meatpacking plant 30 minutes away.

“I feel lonely. We used to be a team. He was a pillar in this family.”

Over the next three months, her kids missed school for more than four weeks because she feared getting arrested. She also got sick a couple times and ended up losing her job. But the bills kept coming.

Without family to lean on, she relies on volunteers to help with rent and food for her kids, 2, 6 and 9.

Now, she is barely holding on.

“I don’t have anything anymore,” she says.

She opened her almost empty refrigerator and pointed at her empty living room. She got rid of her furniture. She also sold her car.

“I used to be healthy. Now, I have migraines, depression and anxiety,” she says. “I can’t sleep at night.”

Her 9-year-old looks sad. The kids rarely go to the park or for walks. Maria says they don’t leave her apartment. She is afraid.

She just wants to go back to Venezuela — a drastic change from just three months ago. Since arriving in Chicago in 2023, the family had started to build the stable life they had been looking for since leaving Venezuela in 2019.

Lately, she’s been going on TikTok to get advice on how to go back home. But she doesn’t have a passport. And she can’t get one — Venezuela doesn’t have a consulate in Chicago or anywhere in the United States.

When she learned about Trump’s self-deportation program on social media, she saw an opportunity.

The Trump administration rebranded an asylum app initially developed under President Joe Biden. Trump is using it to get people to self-deport. She started the process and has a departure date. Now, she is just waiting for the travel details. She sends e-mails every day asking for updates.

Maria says she is not sure if the government will hold up its end of the bargain, and advocates say she’s right to be cautious.

She worries about getting separated from her kids during travel or ending up in a country other than Venezuela, especially after what her husband went through.

But she says she has no other options. She doesn’t want to be in the United States without Marcos any longer.