They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America

This article first appeared at Propublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

She desperately wanted to get out of the country.

It was mid-May and Pérez, a Venezuelan mother of two, couldn’t survive on her own in Chicago anymore. She’d been relying on charity for food and…