For many migrants, outdoor settlements offer more cultural familiarity than shelters

CHICAGO — Even after being offered a bed in a city-run shelter multiple times since getting to Chicago from Ecuador in September, Jeancarlos Bosquez refused to take it. Instead, the 25-year-old and his friends, two migrants from Venezuela, got a tent big enough for all three of them, fortified it with wood sticks, wrapped it in a tarp to protect it from the rain and cold, and put carpet on the …