After 25 years of selling tamales in Chicago, an undocumented immigrant mother returns to Mexico without her family

[Judi Lynn]

After 25 years of selling tamales in Chicago, an undocumented immigrant mother returns to Mexico without her family



Claudia Perez walks through the municipal pantheon of Coacoatzintla, Veracruz, on Feb. 21, 2024. (Victoria Razo/for the Chicago Tribune)
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By LAURA RODRIGUEZ PRESA | [e-mail] | Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHED: April 20, 2024 at 10:04 a.m. | UPDATED: April 20, 2024 at 10:27 a.m.

Claudia Perez’s children could count on one hand the number of times they had seen their father cry.

The day their mother left was one of them.

Perez had worked her whole life for a dream that did not come true: Save enough money to take her family back to Mexico and live together in the town where they were all born.

Instead, on a cold February day, she stepped onto a bus in Brighton Park and said goodbye. The day had come to make the difficult choice between her loved ones in Mexico and her family in Chicago.

“Don’t leave my love. No te vayas viejita,” her husband yelled as she waved goodbye from inside the bus.

Battling health problems and a ticking clock, Perez, 63, chose to leave the life she’d built for herself and her family over the past 25 years. Though she was a successful street vendor in Little Village, she was in the country without legal permission. And she yearned to return to Mexico to hug her aging siblings, visit her parents’ graves and see the houses she’d built for her family using the money she’d earned selling tamales in Chicago.

More:
https://www.presstelegram.com/2024/04/20/after-25-years-of-selling-tamales-in-chicago-a-mother-in-us-illegally-returns-to-mexico-without-her-family/