27 buses carrying migrants arrive in Chicago since Saturday

Osvalgo Montilla, 57, got off a charter bus in Chicago’s West Loop Wednesday afternoon after trekking thousands of miles from Venezuela, thinking about his wife of 25 years who was in a detention facility in Del Rio, Texas.

Montilla, a pharmacist in his home country with three grown children, had traveled to the United States and sat on a bus for 20 hours. But he was most worried about his wife, who he hadn’t seen in five days. When the couple entered the U.S. on Sept. 22, his wife, like thousands of other migrants, was arbitrarily selected to be put in a detention facility.

“Here there is employment. I want to grow — economically and personally,” he said in Spanish. “But my biggest worry is finding my wife.”

He wasn’t sure when or how he would reconnect with her.

Montilla is just one of the hundreds of new migrants who have arrived in Chicago in the past week with an uncertain future, as the number of asylum-seekers has surpassed 15,000 with the arrival of 27 buses…