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We're almost through the workweek. Start off this rainy day with these stories from WTTW News.
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Prison cells and bars are shown in a file photo. (txking / iStock)
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For the past nine years, Manuel Cervantes has been applying to transfer out of the Illinois prison where he’s incarcerated.
But he’s not looking for release; he’s applying to transfer to a prison in Durango, Mexico.
“My parents are close to 80 years old now; their health is not the best,” Cervantes said on a call with WTTW News, noting he wants to finish his sentence in Mexico so he can spend more time with his parents. While his parents do visit him in Illinois, he said a transfer to Mexico would be better for his family.
Cervantes, a Mexican national, has applied for a transfer through the little-known International Prison Transfer Program. It began in 1977, when the U.S. and Mexico signed a treaty that allows for citizens incarcerated in either country to apply to transfer to a facility in their home country. Since that first treaty, more than 80 other countries have signed their own treaty with the U.S.
Cervantes is still waiting at Dixon Correctional Center after having been denied transfer six times.
Over the past five years, 59 petitions have been filed with the Illinois Department of Corrections from those incarcerated in Illinois state prisons requesting transfers all over the world: Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, Ghana, Honduras, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom.
Yet during this period, only two people have been approved, and two more are pending, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Some backstory:
Illinois is not alone in issuing denials with a heavy hand. In 2013 — the most recent publicly available data from the federal government — an estimated 24,122 people across the country requested transfers from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, including 22,700 that the bureau deemed ineligible and 1,422 that the agency determined eligible and forwarded to the International Prison Transfer Program for further review. However, just 245 people were transferred that year.
The most recent report from the U.S. OIG in 2015 left the agency “concerned” that the DOJ was not fully utilizing its transfer authority. Mexico, it found, was especially reluctant to approve transfer requests their nationals made and the DOJ approved. Mexico has consistently defended its low approval rate as a response to overcrowded prisons and the need to reject inmates who will threaten prison security, the report continued.
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Sponsor Message
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Make your plans to celebrate this April with the Poetry Foundation, offering a full roster of FREE public programs, including:
- a poetry reading with Chicago’s own National Book Award winner Patricia Smith;
- a live performance by chamber music collective D+Composed;
- a library packed with more than 40,000 books of poetry for readers of all ages.
Visiting Hours: Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 11 AM–5 PM; Thursday 11 AM–6 PM
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Don Tracy appears on “Chicago Tonight” on April 1, 2026. (WTTW News)
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Former Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy won the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in last month’s primary election, pushing him closer to his goal of taking over longtime U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s seat. Tracy is facing Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in the Nov. 3 general election.
Illinois hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 2010 when Mark Kirk assumed the role, but Tracy is confident he can break through in the deeply blue state.
Tracy joined “Chicago Tonight” to discuss his road ahead to Election Day and the most pressing issues to voters.
On why he’s running:
“Everybody should run for public office because it’s just an important thing in a democracy that you need — citizen participation. I’ve been in the private sector for many decades. I’ve been a lawyer more decades than I care to admit, but I’ve also been in business and I owned and operated my own small business at times when I had to struggle to put food on the table and make payroll at the same time. I think one of the hardest and most important of all human endeavors is politics and I feel like I’ve got the skill set by being a lawyer and having succeeded in business as well to do this.”
On the war in Iran:
“I’m hoping to hear that we’re continuing to make progress, that it’s going to be a very short conflict and that we will have successfully degraded Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its intercontinental ballistic missile ambitions, and its base as a state — the largest sponsor of state terrorism in the world — and that this will lead to at long last peace in the Mideast and elsewhere.”
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Background: Chicago City Hall is pictured in a file photo. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News) Inset: CHA Board Chairman Matthew Brewer (Courtesy of the Chicago Housing Authority)
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Mayor Brandon Johnson moved Wednesday to oust the head of the Chicago Housing Authority board after he led the push to appoint a new CEO to lead the agency over the mayor’s objections.
CHA Board Chairman Matthew Brewer vowed to fight Johnson’s attempt to remove him from the 10-member board and prevent Keith Pettigrew from taking over the nation’s third largest public housing agency on April 20.
Johnson in a statement called Brewer’s “unilateral decision” to appoint Pettigrew “an action fully inconsistent with the Housing Authorities Act and Bylaws of the CHA Board of Commissioners.”
Pettigrew’s selection as CEO was approved by seven members of the board. Brewer said in a statement that he, and the other members who supported Pettigrew’s appointment as CEO, “followed the law.”
Some backstory:
Johnson pushed the board for nearly a year to name former Ald. Walter Burnett (27th Ward), one of his closest allies on the Chicago City Council, to lead the CHA, only to run into a brick wall of opposition from board members and federal officials.
The CHA, which has an annual budget of $1.4 billion, has been without a permanent leader for 18 months. The agency provides more than 65,000 low-income households with public housing, rental vouchers and homeownership programs.
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More From WTTW News:
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Back in the Day: April 2, 2011 - Svengoolie Gets National TV Slot
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Svengoolie has been a local Chicago television staple since 1970. The character, who dons a top hat, goatee and heavy makeup, has been played by Rich Koz since 1979. During that decade, Koz would mail original host Jerry G. Bishop jokes for the character, eventually became Bishop’s assistant and took over the character with Bishop’s blessing. The show, which first aired on WFLD and now runs on MeTV, presented spoofs of low budget and classic sci-fi and horror films over the
broadcast, alongside jokes and hijinks. On this day 15 years ago, Svengoolie finally got a national audience when MeTV went into national syndication. Since then, he’s remained a fixture of the channel and his audience has grown. “I became an overnight success in about 43 years,” Koz said to Variety in 2022. “Believe me, I’ll take it. It’s been pretty amazing and flattering to me to see this. And the fact is, not only have we gotten such a huge audience, but it continues to grow.”
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This Week's Arts and Culture Events
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Every Thursday, WTTW News newsletter producer Josh Terry highlights his picks for the week’s must-see cultural events.
It’s understandable if the up-and-down rainy weather this week has you feeling blue. While it’s been officially spring since March 20, it’s sometimes felt like we’ve had several “false springs” keeping us from fully putting away the winter coats. It’s not ideal, but as Chicagoans, we’ve seen worse and it hasn’t stopped us from getting out of the house. This week, make your own spring by checking this selection of local arts offerings.
Art: “Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color” – Art Institute of Chicago
Say you had plans to go to a baseball game, but it got rained out. The perfect alternative is a day trip to one of the city’s many indoor museums. Earlier in March, a new exhibit at the Art Institute opened, highlighting Henri Matisse’s late-career pivot to cut paper. In the 1940s, the iconic artist had “become bedridden and unable to paint following an excruciating abdominal surgery, and cut paper allowed him to continue to create in his relatively sedentary state.” The Art Institute has had these works since 1948, but “Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color” marks the first time this series will be presented in full. Tickets for the exhibit, which runs until June 1, can be found here.
Play: “The Official Biography” — The Den Theatre
Kurt McGinnis Brown’s play “The Official Biography” follows a young Black journalist who is set to interview an aging White novelist. While the writer has set out to write a scathing takedown, their conversation takes an unexpected turn and reveals deeper truths about the interviewer and subject. Tickets can be found here.
Comedy: Lil Rey Howery — The Comedy Bar
Comedian Lil Rey Howery, a Chicago native, has been the highlight of many film and television comedies, from “Bad Trip” and “The Carmichael Show” to the horror movie “Get Out.” This weekend, he makes a return trip to his hometown for a run of shows at The Comedy Bar on the Magnificent Mile. Shows run from Thursday through Sunday and you can buy tickets here.
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What's your favorite building in Chicago? Tell us why.
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published.
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry
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