Insults, spoiled food and no bedding — inside a Chicago landscaper’s ordeal with ICE in Broadview

 

Rey Estrada and Liz Soto

     “It was a little bit hard, the words they were saying...” began Rey Estrada, in Spanish, when asked about being seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 21 as he did landscaping work in Rogers Park, ticking off terms that hardly need translation: “Illegal. Gordo. Negro.” Illegal. Fat. Black.
     “That’s why they stopped me. My skin. “
     Estrada was one of about 4,000 Chicagoans swept off the street beginning in September under Operation Midway Blitz, the federal government deportation campaign targeting immigrants in the Chicago area. While labeling the people they were seizing as “the worst of the worst,” most of the immigrants arrested — more than 60% — had no criminal record whatsoever. Estrada never had so much as a parking ticket.
     He spent three hours in the back of an SUV, and was taken to ICE’s detention facility in west suburban Broadview. He spent the next 48 hours in a large room with 150 other men — in a room he was told was intended for 80 people. There were three metal toilets. The lights were always on.
     “They never turned it off,” he said. Estrada had no bed, no mattress, no blankets. He folded his jacket as a pillow. Sleep was impossible anyway — every half hour the door was opened and various names were screamed.
     It was also hot — the detainees begged the guards to keep a slot open for ventilation. They were fed Subway sandwiches that had spoiled — Estrada picked the black moldy meat off and ate the bun.
     He said the Spanish-speaking guards were harsher than the English speakers.
     “The guards yelled at us and called us pigs,” he said. “The guards who spoke English, I have nothing bad to say about them.”
     He was allowed to call home the afternoon he was detained.
     “We were worrying about him,” his wife, Liz Soto, said. “I was driving to go pick up the kids from school. He asked me, ‘How are you?’ and I asked him, ‘How do you want me to be?’”
     He told her they were offering him self-deportation money to go to Mexico.

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Bob Dylan's 'unaccustomed subjunctive' case

Bob Dylan at the Chicago Stadium, Jan. 3, 1974

    The New Year made me think of my 2022 book, "Every Goddamn Day," with its 366 little essays on Chicago history.
      Some dates were easy to match to an event — Oct. 8, the Great Chicago Fire, March 3, the incorporation of the city, Aug. 15, the unveiling of the Picasso. 
      Then there was Jan. 3. Nothing really happened on Jan. 3 — the best I could come up with was a Bob Dylan concert in 1974. Which was a fact, not a story. So I started to dig. It was his first solo show since he nearly died in a motorcycle accident in 1966. Trivia, not a story. 
     Eventually I found a set list, mentioning the debut of a certain song. And a stuffy Tribune review. And I was on my way.

     Jan. 3, 1974: The concert at the Chicago Stadium is almost over. Bob Dylan's first in eight years, since he stopped touring in 1966, blaming a motorcycle accident. He has sung his own classics, “Lay Lady Lay,” and “The Times They Are A Changing.” He has sung “Stage Fright” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” penned by the group backing him, The Band. After their “Rag Mama Rag,” Dylan launches into a song never before heard in public: 
      “May God bless and keep you always,” he begins. “May your wishes all come true.” 
      Even the Chicago Tribune's Thomas Willis—a classical music critic in his mid-40s who sometimes lowers his gaze to contemplate contemporary artists— notices. In his review, he first tut-tuts Dylan's use of obscure words. Then dismisses his singing ability. “Dylan will never win any performance prizes.” And his harmonica playing. 
      Finally, Willis gets down to picking apart one specific song.

      “He introduced, among others, one presumably titled, 'Forever Young,'” Willis writes. “It is highfalutin' in its diction and full of words like 'courage,' 'truth,' 'righteousness,' and 'joy.' Over and over, in unaccustomed subjunctive, it repeats the line, 'May you be forever young.' Make of it what you will.” 
      Artists make a lot of it, despite that grammatically unusual "may you stay" (which Williams misquotes in his review). The song will be covered at least 75 times, by artists from Joan Baez to Peter, Paul and Mary, Chrissie Hynde to Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte to Johnny Cash. All seem untroubled by the unaccustomed subjunctive, use of which will not prevent Dylan from winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.

Honey Bear Bites

      In the 25 years I've been coming to Sunset Foods, I've encountered lots of people promoting new food products. My heart goes out to them.  Most new companies fail, and most one-person food companies fail extra fast — undercapitalized. 
      Usually they're at a table in some aisle deep within the store. But Ryan Schaul positioned himself standing right by the check-out lines. A bit inconvenient to step around, but points to him for getting in people's faces. You couldn't avoid him, not if you wanted to pay for your groceries.
     Not that I need much encouragement.  I am both a striver and a foodie, so when I meet someone who is pushing a new food product, my heart naturally goes out to them. I tried one of his Honey Bear Bites. Soft. Tasty. Not too sweet. 
     Nor cheap. At $9.99 for eight. But sweetened with honey and dried maple syrup. Ninety calories, it seemed the sort of thing I might eat if my blood sugar was trending low. I told him that I am a diabetic, and he steered me toward the bites that come with dark chocolate chips.

   "This one has less sugar because it doesn't have raisins," he said. "In each big bite, only six grams of sugar. That one would probably be the best for you."
    I asked him a few questions: what industry he was abandoning to sell the bites? (tech). Where were the bites made? (an industrial kitchen in Highland Park). It seemed ungracious to quiz the man and not buy something. 

    He's 43, a graduate of University of Wisconsin — Madison, with a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.  
    He also sells his own Sleeping Bear honey.
   "The honey helps you sleep at night," he said. "I'm very passionate about health  and wellness, and sleep is the keystone to being being healthy. That's why I started the company."
     He only flubbed one question: where does the name "Sleeping Bear" come from? He said, in essence, that it's a name he came up with and doesn't mean anything in particular. I'd advise him to work on that reply.
    I took a package home, and liked them. So much so I had to establish a personal rule — only one a day. Which I found difficult to enforce, and polished them off quickly Next time I was in Sunset, I bought another box. That tells you everything you need to know. Luxury you can afford.

      

New Year's Day, 2026

 

Suburban Clock & Repair, Berea, Ohio

      Thinking about New Year's Day and seeking inspiration, I looked at the past few years on EGD — not bad  — then did a deep dive, pulling my Waterstone's Literary Diary for 1986 down, to see what I was up to 40 years ago.
     My brother and I were in Berea, where my parents were holding one last New Year's Eve party before moving to Boulder, where they would live for 35 years. On Dec. 31 we made the rounds of our hometown, going to the barber shop where we had gotten our first haircuts, sitting on a board that had a horse's head on it, to bring us up to proper height for cutting.
     "Sam & I —shaven at barber's, drinks at Ledge's, nice small town feel," I wrote. "Barbers —Tony, Tom —wished us 'boys' well, shook hands."
     My father must have been force-feeding me tales of his youth, as was his practice, and I was taking notes that would become "Don't Give Up the Ship" a dozen years later.
     "My father told of being a young boy in New York and wanting to go to Europe ... running down the Grand Concourse, thinking self a light cruiser in a world of battleships and heavy destroyers."
     I don't believe that image made the book — a pity, because it is a sweet one, a defining quality of youth, that nimbleness, darting around lumbering obstacles. I guess I'm a dreadnaught now, blasting my low horn at the speedy cigarette boats as they flash past.
     I was 25, living in Oak Park, writing a novel, working at Graham Hayward & Associates, a tiny  Lincolnwood advertising agency, a "curious pace. Sales reps have full bar. Music in each room. Little pressure to produce." 
     Best not to get lost in the minutia of the past. The red Waterstone journal had quotes every week — hence a "Literary Diary" — and I, fond of snippets from minds sharper than my own, would write more down on the endpapers or, in this case, save time by snipping out a newspaper clipping and taping it on the page. From "Man and Superman" by George Bernard Shaw:

     "This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

     The key phrase in the above "recognized by yourself." You can't expect the world to countersign what you find important. You have to know it, in your own heart, and proceed with confidence. Maybe they catch on. Maybe they won't. Probably they won't.

      That's a thought to hold close as we boldly march into a new year. Or timidly tiptoe. Or somewhere in between.

     

Buh-bye 2025, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out

I ran into protesters at the No Kings rallies who turned a line from my column into a sign. 

     Old man 2025 goes out one door, with his long white beard, scythe and hourglass. A brand new baby in a diaper, with a sash proclaiming "2026," is supposed to come toddling in another.
     Doesn't feel that way, does it? Whatever your expectations of 2026, "shiny and happy and new" doesn't describe them.
     Old Joe Biden goes out one door. Donald Trump comes toddling in another. Well, a baby of a sort ...
     But not what tradition led us to expect. That was 2025. The solid foundation of America felt like the floor of a bouncy castle. 

     My mother departs without a word — so uncharacteristic of her — and my granddaughter enters with a cry. I always heard codgers crow about how great their grandkids are but never understood what they were talking about until now. It's like taking a bath in liquid happiness.
     That's 2025. Very wrong and grim, interrupted with flashes of hope and joy. The return to the White House of a man who, in my view, ought to be in prison. Then the country pushes back, with Chicago and Illinois at the forefront. Two No Kings protests. A new pope, from Chicago, trying to put the kindness back into Christianity.
     Donald Trump's war on immigrants was the biggest story of the year. Soldiers patrolling Downtown. Masked government thugs seizing people off the street based on the color of their skin. Routinized self-dealing. The Swiss handed the president a gold bar. Caring about stuff like that felt as dated as Jimmy Carter's cardigan. The normalization of an administration of infamy that we should never feel comfortable with, not until it is gone and history. Not even then.
     What was Harriet Beecher Stowe's line? "This horror, this nightmare abomination! Can it be in my country! It lies like lead on my heart, it shadows my life with sorrow."

     Sorrow mixed with pride. The Sun-Times was on the front lines, covering ICE rampages, and I've never been prouder to be associated with the newspaper, its fearless reporters and photographers. I wish I could say I led the way. But I didn't. I tried to provide perspective, to put up some covering fire where I could. When Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza urged Chicagoans to patronize Little Village businesses to make up for locals afraid to leave their homes, we sat down to dinner to discuss the situation. More recently, I reported on landscapers — easy pickings for ICE, standing in people's yards, working — as if you'd find "the worst of the worst" raking leaves in Evanston. The worker we focused on, Rey, was released from federal custody and reunited with his family on Monday..
     Otherwise, I saw my job as to not dwell in one place too long — I had 141 bylines in the paper in 2025 — offering a variety of snapshots of the roller coaster that was 2025.
     Entering my 39th year on staff, I tried to shake it up a bit. In August, architecture critic Lee Bey and I hosted an architectural boat tour on the Chicago River that was so popular — tickets sold out in a couple of hours — that we held a second one, raising thousands of dollars for Chicago Public Media, meeting supporters and readers. That was fun.

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The boat cruise was a lot of fun (Tyler LaRiviere for the Sun-Times)

'In conclusion, it is important to note that AI will play a crucial role...' — The State of the Blog 2025:

Daley Plaza, March 7, 2025

     This blog debuted on July 1, 2013. For its first decade, I would present a "State of the Blog" around the actual anniversary, usually the last day of June.

     But this year, as June melted into July, I was in New Jersey, helping my older son move his young family down the coast, and didn't feel like picking through the past year. So I just skipped it. No one noticed.
     Beside, I do pretty much the same thing at New Year's, marking the end of the calendar year, and I figured: once a year is plenty. Maybe even too much.
     You don't need me to tell you that 2025 seemed fairly grim. The return of a liar, bully, fraud and traitor to the White House when he really should be in prison. Elon Musk's giddy defacement of the federal government. Masked thugs seizing people on the street based on the color of their skin. The normalization of an administration of infamy that we should never feel comfortable about, not until it is gone and history. Not even then.

     On the personal front, a series of losses, beginning with my mother in June, then my cousin Harry in September. Sister Rosemary. Lori Cannon. Tony Fitzpatrick. As bad as that is, it seemed a foretaste: the people you love are going to go, one by one, and then, eventually, your turn. I mean, "my turn." 
     Not a lot of gas in the tank to pick over a years worth of column. But plodding forward is something I do well — God knows I've had practice — and now that I've done my picking, I'm glad. Because honestly, when I look back on the past year, unaided, it all blends into a uniform buzz. But actually rambling through the entries, I do find pieces that make me feel ... well, proud would overstating the case. More like "Satisfied that I'm not completely wasting your time, and mine."
     Five point three million views over the past year. Though if we discard those outside the United States, all bots for sure, it falls to 1.6 million. About 4,500 actual readers a day. That sounds about right. Small ball, social media wise. Kim Kardashian gets 5,000 hits in a minute for coughing into her fist on Instagram
     But if 4,500 people were gathered in an auditorium, waiting to hear what I say, that would seem a considerable crowd, and I would show up and choose my words carefully.
      Enough. What were the highlights?
     In January, I presented a surprisingly moving visit to Cooperstown, 'No crying in baseball'? There is if you visit the Hall of Fame.

     February, a story that began about volunteers who sit in court as silent witnesses during pet abuse trials, turned into one gripping case of animal cruelty: "Oh my God! It's a dog! It's alive!"
     In March, I thought to compare a fictional TV gay fire fighter with the real thing and —mirabile dictu —the CFD actually cooperated, itself a noteworthy occurrence.

     In April, after Illinois comptroller Susana Mendoza put out a video urging Chicagoans to go to Little Village, to make up for locals afraid to leave their homes, we sat down to dinner together to talk about the situation.  

     In May, the founder of Facebook announced that most Americans have fewer than four friends, and offered to sell them some AI buddies. I mused on real friendship in "Mark Zuckerburg wants to sell you new AI friends."

     In June, Chicago said goodbye to Sister Rosemary Connelly, whose life I was proud to outline. 'She saw our kids as people, not as disabilities.' 

     July found me in Washington with my new granddaughter. I looked at the capital of a nation renouncing its basic values, with DEI at DC memorials ripe for purging.

     August was goodbye to Lori Cannon, tireless 'AIDS angel,' dead at 74: 'She took care of the whole universe'. I also spun a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park into a rumination on humanity in What if crowds don't have to spoil the view.

     September, I was back in Washington, talking to the National Guard: At least the Washington Monument is safe. And when the guard arrived in Chicago, I wrote a front page story recounting Chicago's long history as a battleground for federal troops.

     October I turned the dullest bit of history ever into a front page story: Erie Canal, the ditch that made Chicago great, marks its 200th birthday. 

     November, the blog continued to support those our government is lashing out at: People still exist even if the Trump administration refuses to see them.

     In December, a rare bit of satire, mocking YouTube sleep videos: Can't sleep? Don't count sheep — use this guided meditation for healthful snoozing.

     Thanks seem in order. First to all the regular commenters, particularly those who point out errors without trying to make sense of them. "When you write 'hte,' do you mean the Norwegian surname, or did you misspell 'the'?" 

     To my wife, for bearing up under this odd obsession of mine. To Charlie Meyerson, for regularly amplifying this blog on his Chicago Public Square. To Marc Schulman, at Eli's Cheesecake, for supporting this blog from the very beginning. If you haven't clicked on their ad, gone to their enticing website and bought a cheesecake, well, I don't see how you can live with yourself.

    My world got smaller, colder and darker this year, with the exception of one glorious grandchild, which, when she's within sight, banishes all other considerations. 

     I complain a lot, as is my nature, but I still love writing this. Love writing just about anything, really. The buzzing cloud of life's concerns falls silent, and it's just me tapping away for a few hours, turning out another one of these things. That people also read them and get something out of them, well, icing on the cake.

    How did Norma Desmond put it? 

     "You see, this is my life. It always will be. There's nothing else. Just us. And the cameras. And those wonderful people out there, in the dark."

     Gloria Swanson was 51 when "Sunset Boulevard" was released. I'm 65. Tick tock.

American transplant system rigged to favor rich overseas medical tourists

Harrison Roberts

     More than 5,000 Americans died waiting for a kidney transplant in 2025. About a dozen a day. One of them was my first cousin Harrison Roberts.
     He was a rambunctious little boy. My earliest memories of Harry are him bouncing on my back at our grandmother's house on Thanksgiving. He was a hefty kid, so that took some indulgence on my part. But I'm seven years older. I managed.
     His father Bill died when Harry was 15. Cancer. Then 20 years ago Harry got cancer himself — colon cancer, Stage 4. Doctors told him to go home, get his affairs in order and die.
     That wasn't acceptable to Harry, in his late 30s, with two young daughters. He fought, enduring intensive rounds of chemotherapy.
     Harry lived near Boston. Years would pass when we didn't speak. But I happened to be in town doing research around 2005 and visited him. We spent a few hours at Mass General while he underwent chemo. It wasn't a big deal, to me; saying goodbye seemed the decent thing to do.
     I didn't realize that when you get cancer others tend to avoid you. Harry later told me he had friends who were reluctant to step inside his house. Like they'd catch it or something. We were closer after that.
     Harry beat the cancer. But the chemo fried his kidneys, and they began to fail. For the past four years, he was on dialysis.
     Dialysis forces a person to sit in a chair three hours at a stretch, five days a week. Harry made calls, often to me. We talked about books, politics, family, everything. We spoke almost every day.
     Sometimes we ran out of things to say and would just silently sit for five or 10 minutes, the phone line open. I'd hear ambient sounds from the hospital or dialysis center, which Harry once described as "a cross between a medical clinic and a bus station."
     He needed a kidney. Harry had friends and relatives line up to offer one — at least six people. We were all rejected.
     Harry's theory was that Mass General didn't want to risk reducing its success rate by giving him a kidney. He'd not only had cancer but a quadruple bypass. Dialysis erodes your heart. If he got a transplant and died, it would lower Mass General's batting average.
     Harry might have been onto something. A nurse pulled him aside and told him he was wasting his time there.
     I'd been urging him to go someplace else for years. There are other great hospitals. Barnes in St. Louis. The University of Chicago Medical Center. The University of Illinois Hospital has a well-regarded transplant program. I reached out to UIH. They were enthusiastic. Sure, if Harry gets to Chicago, they'll evaluate him.
     By then he'd had another setback with his heart. Plus vein problems. He'd lost part of his foot. Travel was out of the question.
     We watched his oldest daughter graduate college on Zoom last year; I stayed with him while his wife Yi attended the ceremony — two weeks driving him to dialysis, hanging out, talking. He taught me to play Go.
     None of this would have made print — not everything belongs in the newspaper. But on Dec. 16 The New York Times ran a front-page story, "Hospitals Cater to ‘Transplant Tourists’ as U.S. Patients Wait for Organs."
     At first glance I thought the story was about Americans going overseas to get organs while patients here languish — Harry and I had joked about buying a black-market kidney in Southeast Asia.

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