Mexican singer Juan Gabriel’s “Querida” was playing loudly through the speakers of a store selling Mexican flags and Hispanic heritage knickknacks next to the Little Village Arch on Sunday morning.

Underneath the arch, the Street Vendors Association of Chicago held a news conference to announce it was giving three checks to immigrant vendors and their families after raising around $278,000 since launching a GoFundMe in late September. Many street vendors have been staying home and not working, for fear of being detained by immigration authorities. The goal is to distribute 600 checks for $500 each to vendors and their families.

“We are united as a city to fight and refuse the militarization and the attacks of the federal government in the immigrant community and the Mexican community, because we are seeing that we are having to bear more of it,” said Beatriz Ponce de León, deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, who attended the conference. “Nobody is going to come and save us. They are attacking us, and Chicago has unified.”

One of the vendors who received a check from the vendor association was Salvador Salas, 75, who has been selling elote, or Mexican street corn, for 28 years on the South Side. Now, he said, he’s stuck inside.

“It’s worse than the pandemic,” said Salas, who sells food prepared at his home kitchen. He said the money is negligible compared with the $200 a day he used to make with his elote cart.

Entire families at home and abroad also depend on Chicago street vendors. Alejandro Aparicio, 23, another check recipient, used to sell corn and fruit in a cart with his father on the Northwest Side. But ever since immigration authorities detained his father, he’s been supporting his wife and 6-month-old son and his father’s family in Mexico.

He said he used to split up the work and shifts with his dad, but now he gets little time off. Aparicio wakes up at 5 a.m. to set up his cart and vends from 10 a.m. to sundown.

“We would help each other out, with bills and rent and everything,” said Aparicio. “Now it’s just me. I have to look (after) for my family and his as well. I’m not complaining or anything. It’s something he used to do, so now it’s my turn, since he’s not here.”

About a month ago, Aparicio said he and his father were setting up the cart as usual when he left to pick up a package. Shortly after, he got a call from his father and overheard him pleading with the authorities to let him speak to his son. When he finally spoke to his father, it was from the detention center at Broadview, where Aparicio’s father was given two options, “wait or sign,” said Aparicio.

A class action federal lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that U.S. officials may be using coercive conditions to expedite detainees’ deportation by having them sign a voluntary departure waiver.

“We told him to wait,” he said, but “he couldn’t last in there” because the conditions were so bad and ended up signing, Aparicio said. His father said they could only use the restroom for limited times, and that for breakfast, lunch and dinner they gave him ham and bread, according to Aparicio.

Using Find My iPhone, Aparicio tracked his father from Broadview to Indiana, Louisiana, Texas and ultimately Mexico, where he reunited with family.

Applications for vendors seeking financial assistance will remain open for three more weeks, said Maria Orozco, the vendor association development manager and outreach coordinator. The organization expected to raise $20,000 in donations and ended up nearing its goal of $300,000 in little over a month.

“It’s tough, it’s scary to see. This street is normally packed with vendors, now you don’t really see anybody like we used to,” said Orozco, whose parents are street vendors. Her mother is now cloistered at home.

As the news conference simmered down, one of the few stands on 26th Street that remained from what used to be a street bustling with carts and vendors selling everything from chicharrones to flowers and bracelets, was setting up a Día de los Muertos and flowers stand.

“It’s really sad, because the community I knew when I got here was really nice, and it reminded me of Mexico,” said Vienney Antunez, who works at the stand with her husband and is from Mexico.

“It’s really unfair,” she said about the recent treatment of immigrants in the neighborhood. They “came and adapted to life here. And why not? They were looking for a better life for their families.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/02/street-vendors-little-village/