Afternoon Edition: Oct. 27, 2020

Luis Rodriguez, a first-time DACA applicant, has been working with the Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project to get people registered to vote. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

After more snow and rain earlier today, this afternoon will be cloudy with a high near 40 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 32 degrees. We should see a bit of a warmup tomorrow: Wednesday will be sunny with a high near 54 degrees.

Top story

Shut out of DACA protections, immigrant youth in Chicago area face uncertain future

When Luis Rodriguez was in high school, he came across an application for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but he thought he needed a lawyer to apply.

Though Rodriguez, now 20, knew he couldn’t afford one, he later learned that immigration organizations could help him with applying. But by the time he saved enough money to pay the application fee, President Donald Trump’s administration announced its plans to terminate the program in 2017.

In the years that have followed, the future of DACA has been in peril.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the program, ruling that the administration did not properly end it. Many immigration advocates believed that meant DACA would return to how it operated before Trump sought to end it — meaning first-time applicants would be able to seek benefits. DACA allows immigrants to obtain work authorization and provides them with deferred action for deportation.

But this summer, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security determined the government would reject all initial DACA applications and require that current DACA recipients renew each year rather than every two years.

The decision meant that Rodriguez and other immigrants who could have been eligible for DACA will continue to be shut out of the program, adding to the uncertainty of their future in the U.S.

“It was an emotional roller coaster,” Rodriguez said about the weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. … We fight for what we want, and we’ll do it again.”

Rodriguez, who lives in the southwest suburbs, has called the Chicago area home since he was about 3 years old. When he was in elementary school, he learned he was undocumented after wondering why friends would travel to Mexico for vacations but his family never did. He didn’t really comprehend what it meant to be undocumented until he got older.

In the months before the election, Rodriguez has helped the Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project register people to vote through phone banking and by going to flea markets and local businesses.

“I’m putting effort into that because I can’t [vote],” Rodriguez said. “Every person that I get registered to vote is a vote for me, basically.”

Vanessa Esparza-Lopez, an attorney with National Immigrant Justice Center’s Immigrant Legal Defense Project, said the memos the government has issued since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling seem to indicate the department is doing an extensive review of the DACA program as the Trump administration’s attempts to comply with correctly ending it.

“If the administration doesn’t change with the election, it’s likely that they will attempt to end the program once again,” said Esparza-Lopez.

The story doesn’t end here. Read Elvia Malagón’s full report.

More news you need

1. Gov. J.B. Pritzker could announce restrictions on indoor bar and restaurant service in Chicago as soon as this afternoon, as coronavirus metrics continue to move in the wrong direction. Chicago has seen eight consecutive days of positivity increases and a full week of rising hospital admissions.
2. Tafara Williams, the woman who was wounded and whose boyfriend, Marcellis Stinnette, was killed by a Waukegan police officer last week during what authorities have described as a traffic stop, spoke publicly for the first time today from her hospital bed. “I kept screaming, ‘I don’t have a gun!’ But he kept shooting,” Williams said.
3. A string of successful bank robberies by an Englewood couple ended last week when the two women were arrested after their car ran out of gas at the end of a high-speed, 100-mile chase into Indiana. The FBI has asked a judge for a warrant to search the pair’s home, where investigators believe they’ll find some of the $20,000 in proceeds and other evidence.
4. The latest numbers from Chicago real estate firms differ slightly, but they all tell the same story: Chicago’s downtown office market is hurting from employer cutbacks due to the coronavirus. With workers staying at home, companies are offering space for sublease in droves, the firms’ third-quarter market reports said.
5. To help pay for its vast expansion, Amazon and its developers have won at least $741 million in taxpayer-funded incentives in northeast Illinois alone, WBEZ reported today following a joint investigation with the Better Government Association. They found most of that money is coming from communities of color.
6. A woman stabbed an employee more than two dozen times while another woman held him by the hair after they were told to wear a mask inside a West Side store, according to police. Jessica Hill, 21, and Jayla Hill, 18, each face a count of attempted murder in the Sunday attack that left the worker in critical condition.
7. The Latin King street gang member who said he attacked R. Kelly in Chicago’s federal jail was sentenced to life in prison for a racketeering conviction that involved two 1999 murders. Jeremiah Shane Farmer said he attacked Kelly “in hopes of getting spotlight attention” on alleged government corruption.

A bright one

‘Horrendously vandalized’ CPS school — shuttered in 2013 — transforming into housing, health center

Community groups in Englewood are working to transform an abandoned elementary school — one of 50 shuttered by city officials in 2013 — into a community center with free transitional housing, life coaching, trades training and a health clinic.

The project is part of a larger effort to revitalize a neglected corridor in the South Side neighborhood that has fallen to decades of disinvestment, including a closed CTA station, and more recently, the school.

The center, dubbed the “Regenerator,” would have dormitory-style housing with space for 100 men who are formerly incarcerated or are vulnerable to poverty and violence; classrooms for trades training; a fresh market; a cafeteria; a pharmacy and a satellite health clinic, organizers said. The latter two would be open to the broader community.

From left, Ben Gordon, Director of Construction, Rami Nashashibi, Executive Director, and Michael Nash all with the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.

The group leading the effort to transform the three-story, 65,000 square foot former Woods Math & Science Academy is the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a nonprofit that works to address structural racism on the South Side.

Michael Nash, who grew up in Englewood, at the age of 18 got involved with IMAN’s “Green ReEntry” program, which provides vulnerable youth and formerly incarcerated men with life skills coaching, trades training and transitional housing. Now 21, Nash is set to work on the renovation of the former school and help build it into the center he and others envision.

“I’m going to be part of everything from start to finish,” he said. “I get to be part of history, bringing up my community. I’m from Englewood. Anything that goes on in Englewood that brings it up and makes it better, I’m for it and I want to be a part of that.”

Keep reading Nader Issa’s story here.

From the press box

As if the loss to the Rams wasn’t painful enough, the Bears’ Matt Nagy and Nick Foles had to answer questions last night about a worrisome comment relayed by ESPN’s Brian Griese, who said Foles told him, “sometimes play calls come in and I know that I don’t have time to execute that play call.”

Foles and Nagy downplayed the anecdote after the game. “That was definitely a miscommunication with Brian and I,” Foles said.

And while Nagy keeps saying he wants to play top pick Cole Kmet, the tight end saw just 32% of snaps against L.A. If Nagy really wants to play him more, he should just do it, Jason Lieser writes.

Your daily question ☕

What do you think of Judge Amy Coney Barrett being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

Yesterday, we asked you: Now that bars are only able to serve Chicagoans outdoors, will you continue to go out, if you have been? Here’s what some of you said…

“Nothing as fun as outdoor dining in the middle of a Chicago winter! I’ll bring my own snow shovel, and instead of putting out a chair for parking dibs, I’ll just sit in the chair!” — Pete Kurasz

“Nope! I refuse to sit outside when it’s this cold. It was snowing this morning!” — Melanie Schmidt

“If restaurants are going out of their way to make dining outside possible, then I am going to go out of my way to make sure I support their efforts!” — Joelle Charbonneau

“If it’s not completely miserable and they have heaters I will wear a coat and hat and deal with it. If it is, we will order takeout.” — Sarah Marren

“I live in the city but go outside of it to buy gas and cigarettes and dine out.” — Keith McLemore

Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.

Sign up here to get the Afternoon Edition in your inbox every day.