Led by City Bureau senior reporter Sarah Conway, four emerging reporters are looking into the recent arrivals of asylum seekers to Chicago. Their focus is on how migrants are finding work and building new lives for themselves — and how the city is responding to their needs. Check back here to see what we find.
Know Your Rights: Day Labor
A guide about your fundamental rights and how to navigate worksites better in Chicago. Read the story.
What Chicago Migrants Face When Looking for Work
Recently arrived migrants say they want to find jobs and build stable lives for their families, but the roadblocks they encounter make it extremely hard to get ahead. Read the story.
Who Are We?
City Bureau Civic Reporting Fellows spend 16 weeks improving their journalism skills and immersing themselves in community reporting. (Staff photos by Ariel Cheung/City Bureau; cover photo by @vxla/Flickr)
Core values statement
As the winter 2024 Civic Reporting fellows at City Bureau, we want to share the core values driving our journalistic work on recent arrivals and their experiences in Chicago:
CENTERING PEOPLE: The people closest to the issue know what’s best and how to address it. We will look to them to identify the issues at play and the solutions they seek.
COMMUNICATING THE JOURNALISTIC PROCESS: Our duty is to inform. That can mean sharing sources’ truths, but also bringing awareness to issues. We will be transparent, honest and open about our work and its limits. We will explain the journalistic process when we talk to sources so they know who we are and what we seek to do.
SAFETY: Our work utilizes a harm reduction framework while covering communities who have been harmed by political and private wrongdoing. Our aim is to protect sources by offering anonymity when it is called for, as well as non-legal information and informed consent prior to and throughout our reporting process.
HONESTY: We aim to provide people with accurate information. We will work to report the facts and verify what we publish. We have an obligation to question public officials and sources and remain transparent with their responses.
Abena Bediako
by Roger Fierro
Abena Bediako’s love of journalism can be traced back to a fourth-grade group project at her Rogers Park elementary school.
The topic was gun control and took the form of a TV news report. The group elected Bediako to play the role of news anchor, interviewing classmates in a black blazer, fake microphone in hand.
She was hooked.
While she studied English at the University of Missouri, she gravitated to her original career goals after graduating. That led her to DePaul University, where she received a master’s degree in journalism.
Bediako says she is especially proud of her perseverance. “I'm just really proud of the fact that I didn't allow not having a degree in journalism deter me from still going for my dream,” she says.
During her time at City Bureau, she hopes to help build trust between the media and people from marginalized and oppressed communities.
Journalism’s role as a public service and promoter of democracy is paramount to Bediako’s work, she says. She hopes it will make a difference in the lives of Chicagoans.
“I'm hoping that the things we report on gives them that sense of power,” she says, “to want to make change in their community and want to see things turn around for the better.”
Roger Fierro
by Abena Bediako
The experiences that have shaped Roger Fierro’s life have laid bare, among other things, the significance of seeing oneself reflected in the media.
“As a Mexican American, there’s not a lot of positive representation, whether it’s entertainment media or news media,” Fierro says. “And I feel like that’s what I bring to the table: more nuanced representation, more honest representation.”
Born and raised on Chicago’s Southwest Side, he received a bachelor’s degree in international studies from the University of Chicago before starting his career in HIV research and data analytics.
His multifaceted career also included work as a bilingual reading teacher, Chicago Public Schools curriculum designer, and strategist with the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce.
As he shifts from being a source of news to reporting on it himself, Fierro said he hopes his lived experiences can deepen the work he does covering Chicago communities of color as a Civic Reporting fellow at City Bureau.
“I think transparency and honesty is important. I also think nuance is really important; it’s another value to add [more] detail,” Fierro says. “It’s about creating positive representation.”
Sebastián Hidalgo
by Erika Perez
Growing up in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Sebastián Hidalgo was encouraged by his community to follow his passion.
“I grew up with giants — and those giants are people like [Mexican-born photographer] Diana Solis — without knowing who they were,” Hidalgo says. “But I remember them encouraging me to pursue the arts, and I carried that with me in my adult life.”
As a Chicago-based photojournalist and reporter, Hidalgo has collaborated on projects shedding light on social justice issues. He has worked with ProPublica and Injustice Watch, and is currently a resident of the Chicago Art Department.
A past City Bureau fellow and team leader, Hidalgo is excited to continue growing alongside City Bureau.
As this year's winter fellowship cohort works on highlighting the personal stories of asylum seekers in Chicago, Hidalgo hopes to create meaningful work that portrays their truth.
“I bleed when I see other people bleed,” Hidalgo says. “If we embody a model of care within journalism, we would ultimately create impactful, meaningful and consistent storytelling.”
Erika Perez
by Sebastián Hidalgo
Growing up, Erika Perez often took on the role of family fact-checker.
Born and raised in the Hermosa neighborhood of Chicago, she was surrounded by friends and family who had questions about what they learned watching the local Spanish-language news station. Perez was happy to help, but saw how widely inaccessible in-depth information could be for Spanish speakers.
“There's a disconnect,” Perez says. “People don’t know where to find information in Spanish.”
Driven by her passion to meet the needs of her community, Perez became managing editor at La DePaulia, a bilingual student-run newspaper at DePaul University, where she also graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications and Latino media.
Perez is currently an assignment editor at Univision Chicago, a local Spanish-language news station, and joins City Bureau’s fellowship program as tension rises in City Hall over the handling of care for tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
“At City Bureau, we’re talking about how data can support our reporting, and I hope that we continue developing those skills,” Perez says.
Sarah Conway
by Jerrel Floyd
For Sarah Conway, her journalism career is both a full circle moment that was meant to be and an untraditional journey.
The City Bureau’s award-winning senior reporter has engaged with communities for stories ranging from addressing the needs of pregnant women of color to food production worker demands.
Her journey with the organization began with fellowships in 2016 and 2017. She was quickly hired as a resident reporter and later had stints as a special projects manager and an editor.
Before joining City Bureau, the Joliet native worked as a teacher, in project management overseas and with public surveying. She also had occasional waitressing gigs. Combined with her love for writing, those experiences added to her self-taught relationship with journalism. It’s an experience she carries with her when working with fellows who also reach journalism through non-traditional paths.
Her own appreciation for journalism began with her great grandmother who annotated Joliet’s Herald-News with pencil.
Conway’s curiosity, paired with her love of writing and creating space for people, helped birth the empathic journalist she is today. Reporting, Conway said, is a tool to craft stories that provide resources and support for communities throughout Chicago’s South and West sides.
“I want to create a space where people can both share and experience their own healing,” she said.
Have Your Say
Do you have questions about recent arrivals in Chicago? Or want to share a tip? Reach out via email at tips@citybureau.org. You can also leave a voicemail or text message for us at 312-361-0881.