Some migrants heading back

Some Venezuelan migrants who trekked thousands of miles to the US in search of a better life are so disheartened, they say they’re already heading back home.

Michael Castejon, 39, told the Chicago Tribune he has had enough after he, his wife and teenage stepdaughter spent five months sleeping either in a police precinct or a crowded city shelter in the now brutally cold Windy City.

He’s also been unable to secure a job permit or enroll his daughter in a local school — two of the main things they thought would mean a better life in the US.

“The American dream doesn’t exist anymore,” Castejon told the paper on the eve of his family’s departure.

“There’s nothing here for us . . . We just want to be home,” Castejon told the Tribune of the South American country he fled.

“If we’re going to be sleeping in the streets here, we’d rather be sleeping in the streets over there.”

More than 20,000 migrants have made their way to Chicago since August 2022, when Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began loading them onto buses and shipping them off to sanctuary cities.

Many of them ended up sleeping at O’Hare International Airport, local police stations or on the streets.

Fed up with the lack of housing and job opportunities, Castejon eventually followed in the footsteps of other disillusioned asylumseekers and turned to Catholic Charities to obtain plane tickets for his family to travel to Texas.

From there, they will somehow find a way to return to their native Venezuela, he said.

“How many more months of living in the streets will it take? No, no more. It’s better that I leave,” he said.

Some disheartened asylum-seekers suggested they had been drawn to Chicago after being wrongly led to believe that they could be swiftly granted asylum status and a work permit, paving the way for a better life.

“We didn’t know things would be this hard,” Castejon said.