“Get down!” Get down! They’ll see us!’: Six months of hiding from the ice

The ICE raids in Chicago, which terrorized immigrant neighborhoods like Ava and Sam’s, were both highly effective and highly indiscriminate. Six weeks earlier, on September 9, Greg Bovino, the G.I. Joe lookalike who had previously served as ICE’s “commander in chief,” arrived in the city with a convoy of unmarked, black pickup trucks to patrol Chicago’s migrant-crowded neighborhoods. Three days later, ICE agents shot Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, an undocumented father of two from Mexico who worked as a cook and had no criminal record, after he tried to drive away from them. ICE officers began lurking on sidewalks, downtown, in grocery stores, in Cook County courthouses, in parking lots, at intersections, in alleys, and in neighborhoods like Ava and Sam.

By the end of September, following a “tip” about reported gang activity — later found to be a squatters complaint — ICE agents stormed a South Side apartment building in the middle of the night, got out of a Black Hawk helicopter and patrolled the sidewalk outside with balaclavas and rifles, arresting 37 people. They broke down doors, browsed through bookshelves, and flipped mattresses. In November, they violently dragged a Colombian teacher from the daycare center where she worked while school was in session. I’m starting to feel like they can take anyone at any time. Sam began to look at the arrests and deportations of co-workers and Facebook groups. The news flowed through Ava’s phone, as she watched video after video on TikTok. The more you click, the more videos appear.

Ava, who changed her name to protect her identity, crossed the border before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time. Her husband, whom I’ll call Sam, arrives in America in 2022; He paid the wolves $12,000 that he had borrowed from family members to make the seven-day trek on foot. “It’s a very heavy decision to make to give up your children and your family,” Sam told me. “You don’t know if you’ll see your family again.” After the perilous journey, he settled in Chicago, where he found work in construction. He worked grueling nine-hour shifts, six days a week, making approximately $600 a week. He sent as much money as he could to Ava at home. When he was off work, exhausted and lonely, he would call his wife and children via video chat. Their daughter, who was a baby at the time, would throw a tantrum every time. He put her to bed every night; Now, when her mother puts her to bed, she instinctively gets up to look for her father’s beard. When she realized he wasn’t there, she cried. It took a month for her to learn how to sleep again. Their eldest son suffered more. One day, he came home from school crying. Ava asked what was wrong. He had seen his friend’s father pick him up from school on his motorcycle, he told her – just the way his father used to pick him up. “When will we see him again?” He asked repeatedly.

The family weighed their options: it was too dangerous to cross the border alone with these young children, and they couldn’t afford another wolf. But staying in Mexico seemed just as dangerous. Drug gangs patrolled their city, recruiting children as young as 13; The police offered little protection. One day, Ava received a panicked call from her brother. It was his two children Outright kidnapping“flash kidnapping” – a common occurrence in their region of Mexico where gang members lure young children with candy or sometimes threats, then hold them hostage until the parents pay for their release. Ava’s brother raised $3,000 and sold everything he owned, including his small house, to get his children back.

Ava and Sam wanted a better future for their children. They heard from friends that they could apply for Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security program that provides emergency asylum to people coming from countries experiencing ongoing armed conflicts, environmental disasters, or exceptional circumstances. For many, this is often the first step to obtaining full refugee status. (The Trump administration has moved to revoke the status of 11 countries and does not consider Mexico an eligible country.) Ava applied during the Biden presidency, and after about a year of waiting, she was notified that she had been granted an interview in the United States that would conclude in 15 days. Frantically, she packed what she could into a large suitcase, gathered the children for their first plane ride, then took a taxi to El Paso, where she suddenly found herself in front of a battalion of American Border Patrol officers.

Border Patrol agents took Ava’s DNA and biometrics and confiscated her passport. They performed a physical examination and made the family strip down to their deepest layers. But Ava still feels that Border Patrol agents treated them warmly. “I didn’t think they were rude or cold or cruel,” she recalled. She had heard that the interview could take all day, but by noon she was free to walk out of the building and go to Texas. I called Sam, who had booked the family plane ticket to Chicago. He gave her instructions on what to do at the airport, as everything was in English, a language she did not yet understand. She navigated her way through a maze of confusion, pulling out her boarding pass every now and then so someone could point her in the right direction. After the plane touched down in the foggy ground at Chicago’s Midway Airport, they cleared customs and found Sam waiting for them.

“I was so happy,” Ava told me. “After not being able to see your family for two years, it was exciting.” “We hugged each other so tight,” Sam added.