Watch | FIRSTHAND: Homeless - The Migrant Experience

Outside Chicago’s Ogden Avenue shelter, Emili Rincón dishes out homemade chicken soup and other Venezuelan specialties. It's a cash-only food business with a limited customer base, but it helps the family make ends meet while they anxiously wait to apply for a work permit. Emili came to the United States after her husband was murdered in Venezuela.

A proud daughter of Colombia’s indigenous Wayuu people, Alba Gomez hopes that relocating to Chicago was the right decision for her family. Arriving in the city to unwelcoming February temperatures, Alba seeks out every available resource to clothe and feed her family of five. At the shelter on Ogden Avenue, Alba is made aware that she does not qualify for any housing assistance.

For Esteban Garrido, drawing his ideas on a clay flower pot or sketchbook brings him one step closer to the freedom he could only imagine seven months ago. As an artist, he seeks a physical and spiritual peace that he could not find in Morona-Santiago Ecuador. Esteban's solo journey to the United States was prompted by his inability to make an honest living in his home country.

Jose Gutierrez and his family are anxiously awaiting their date in immigration court. Having left Venezuela to seek asylum, the only thing that seems certain is that he cannot return to his home country, even if it means starting life over in a minimum wage job. He makes his rounds six days a week as a maintenance worker for a fast food franchise, which is humbling for this former police officer.

A Community Manager for Chicago Public Schools, Victoria Infante builds cultural bridges between new migrants and the city’s schools. As Chicago wrestled with an influx of 35,000 new immigrants, Victoria created a welcoming place for the school-age children who settled in the Pilsen neighborhood, welcoming parents and students to her after-school programs, and to a free store called “La Tiendita."