chicago — The two-year-old was very frightened and was stuttering.
“Mama, mamma, mamma,” he repeated, clinging to her.
His mother, Molly Kocic, was grocery shopping when her husband called her in a panic. I heard the “immigration raid.” Then: “tear gas.”
She abandoned her grocery cart and drove as fast as she could to her toddler and his 14-month-old brother, who, on a warm October Friday, were among hundreds of Chicago children suddenly caught up in unrest. The Trump administration’s campaign against immigration.
Parents, teachers and caregivers She has been wrestling ever since With how Explain to the children What they saw: How much they needed to be told so they knew enough to stay safe, but not so much that it took away from their childhood. Kocic said a young child should not know what a tear gas canister is.
“I don’t know how to explain this to my kids.”
Children were playing on the monkey bars outside Funston Elementary School just before noon On October 3 when a white SUV rolled onto their street in Logan Square, a historically Hispanic neighborhood that has been steadily gentrifying for years. Cars followed, and drivers were honking their horns to alert neighbors that these were federal agents. A motorcycle stopped in front of the four-wheel drive vehicle, trying to prevent it from entering. There were no mass protests; Some of the teachers who were walking to lunch at first didn’t realize what was happening.
Suddenly, tear gas canisters flew out of the window of the SUV.
A cloud of gas rose, first white, then green, and the street exploded into pandemonium. Some people ran. Others shouted at customers to leave. Sirens screamed towards them. Parents skipped stop signs and drove their cars onto sidewalks to get to their children.
Kochic’s son was half a block away, eating lunch in the window of the Luna y Cielo Play Café, where children learn Spanish while playing with pretend food and toy cars. His nanny takes him there most days. He made his best friends at the café, and his little brother took his first steps there.
Owner Vanessa Aguirre-Avalos ran outside to see what was happening, while the children’s nannies moved them to a back room. Aguirre Avalos is a citizen. Nannies, Hispanic grandmothers, are citizens or are legally permitted to work in the United States
However, they were terrified. One of them pleaded with Aguirre Avalos: If they take me, please make sure the children come home safe.
Eventually, the SUV drove off, the smoke cleared, and the parents arrived. “What is happening?” A girl cried over and over again.
Kochich’s son, who is white, is now worried about his nanny, an American citizen from Guatemala. He asks where is she and when is she coming. He jumps at the sound of sirens. His mother called his pediatrician to refer him to a therapist.
Andrea Soria, whose daughter plays in Luna e Cielo, overheard her 6-year-old whispering to her dolls: “We have to be good or ICE will get us,” referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“These kids are traumatized,” Aguirre-Avalos said. “Even if ICE stopped doing what it’s doing now, people would be shocked. The damage has already been done.”
It was a beautiful Friday, so fifth-grade teacher Lisa Oliva Perez headed to the grocery store across the street for lunch.
I noticed a hovering helicopter, then the SUV with a tail of horns.
That morning, another teacher gave her a whistle, with instructions to blow it if immigration agents were in the neighborhood.
Oliva Perez whistled to her lips. At that moment, she rolled down the window of the SUV and saw a masked man inside throwing a tear gas grenade.
“I couldn’t understand what was happening,” Oliva Perez said. Then he threw another, this time in her direction.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Border Patrol agents They were “obstructed by demonstrators” during a targeted enforcement operation in which a man was arrested.
Chicago crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” It started in early September. Armed, masked agents in unmarked trucks patrol neighborhoods and residents They protested In ways Big and small Against what they consider their city under siege. Agents Breaking into a residential complex By helicopter in the middle of the night. They have detained American citizens, including… Elected officials. agent He shot and wounded a woman who allegedly used her car to surround them. The demonstrators They were shot with tear gas They shot him with pepper bullets. President Donald Trump wants To deploy the National Guard.
DHS wrote that its agents were being intimidated: “Our brave officers are facing a surge in assaults against them, leading to sniper attacks, weaponized vehicles, and assaults by rioters. This violence against law enforcement must end. Rioters and protesters will not deter us in keeping America safe.”
In Logan Square, agents fired tear gas with pepper balls “after repeated vocal attempts to disperse the crowd,” the statement said.
Oliva Perez was just feet from the sidewalk and didn’t hear them say anything. Videos show cars and a motorcycle trying to block the SUV, and a few bystanders harassing the officers.
Oliva Perez ran towards the school and shouted at the staff to get the children into school.
“It really shocked me,” she said. “Here I was an American citizen, a teacher, and I was treated like a common criminal.”
She was shaking when she reached her classroom of 25 students, who wanted to know what had just happened. They are all of Hispanic descent. She knows they’re having painful conversations at home — who they’ll call if their parents disappear, where they’ll go. Oliva Perez became a teacher six years ago, after her daughter died by suicide when she was 16 years old. She wanted to help children feel loved and safe. She had never had a harder time than she had that afternoon.
“I had to act like nothing was wrong,” she said. “I don’t want them to be like this. If Mrs. Oliva is afraid, I will be afraid too.”
She and the other teachers spent the afternoon telling the kids that everything was okay. But every one of them dreaded the bell at the end of the day. They had to lead the students outside, and they didn’t know what was waiting for them: masked men? More tear gas?
First-grade teacher Maria Heavener spread the word in community group chats that the school needed help.
When the final bell rang, she escorted her students outside. In every direction, neighbors lined the sidewalk, dozens of them. There were people who had never considered themselves activists, or even particularly political, standing there, angry, scanning the streets for unmarked SUVs and masked men. They signed up to come back every morning and afternoon.
“Don’t mess with kids. Don’t go near schools,” Hefner said. “Whatever your agenda is, this seems to cross a lot of lines.”
Two young boys were walking near Evelyn Medina’s gift shop next to the school, and they grabbed each other so tightly that they dug their fingers into each other’s hands.
“They were so scared,” Medina said, crying when she thought about how they looked leaving school that day. “It was really hard to see, and imagine, what was going on in their little minds.”
Medina, a 43-year-old native, understands the fear these children face: She came to the United States from Mexico at age 8. As a child, she was worried that someone would take her parents away.
She noticed that people picked up many children that day for their friends and neighbors who were afraid to leave their homes. A parent packed seven children into a pickup truck. A 13-year-old girl cried when she saw one of her neighbors there to pick her up. Her mother usually came for her, but not that day.
When that girl returned home, she told her mother that she thought the house might be empty, and that agents might have been there and taken her away.
Her mother does not have permanent legal status and requested that her name not be used for fear of being targeted for deportation. Her biggest fear is… Separation from her children.
This fear that pervades this community is no longer limited to families who lack permanent legal status.
One mother, whose 12-year-old son was in school that day, now wakes up every morning at 4 a.m., her head pounding, her heart racing. She frequently checks social media for reports of people being spotted by Border Patrol or ICE: another tear gas incident; Another raid; A 15-year-old American boy was arrested.
She and her son are citizens, but she asked that only her first name, Ava, be used because she feared their citizenship would not matter.
“The color of our skin defines our identity,” she said.
Her son constantly cries: “I don’t want to lose my grandparents.”
He offered to buy groceries so they could stay inside. She struggles with the balance between letting him help without burdening him and without making him grow up too quickly.
“Losing them would break him up forever,” she said. “His question is always: Why? Why? Why? Why?”
“i don’t know why.”
Vanessa Aguirre-Ávalos now keeps the door locked at Luna y Cielo, and wears her whistle like a necklace, always at the ready.
When you hear the car horn sound, you panic. Is it happening again?
That day, she ran in and out of her store, bringing milk and vinegar to help people clean tear gas and pepper residue from their faces. I coughed for two days.
Her neighborhood has become a symbol of what happens when children are caught up in aggressive and sometimes violent federal action. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spoke outside the school a few days later: “In order to educate children, we have to protect them. We have to create a safe and welcoming environment. This is who we are as teachers. This is who teachers have always been.”
Now, each utility pole is plastered with anti-icy particle stickers and instructions on what to do if trapped. “This neighborhood was tear gassed,” says one of them. “No one is safe unless we all are.”
Aguirre-Avalos, who grew up in this neighborhood, was born in Texas to a mother from Mexico, and she thinks so Move there. It’s hard for her to imagine a future in Chicago or anywhere else in the United States for her children, an 8-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter.
“They don’t want us here,” Aguirre Avalos said of her government. “We will always be targeted.”
Luna y Cielo opened two years ago as a fun place for kids to learn Spanish, and to help the next generation learn to love the language. Her business is suffering now. She’s not sure she can pay this month’s rent.
People are staying inside, their curtains drawn. The playgrounds are quiet. The vendor selling ice cream at her corner no longer comes out. Everyone is afraid.
She scheduled a daily guided session with parents. She brings in a Spanish-speaking therapist to talk to the nannies.
One of the nannies, who is watching two younger sisters, no longer wears her pajamas to sleep. She sleeps with her clothes on, unable to get a full night’s rest.
“This is not life,” she said. “This is not livelihood.”
She wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. and gets down on her knees to pray.
She is a grandmother of five and great-grandmother of two, and is legally permitted to work in the United States. She spoke on the condition that her name not be used because she is worried about what could happen to her and her family, as well as the two- and three-year-old girls she cares for.
“If I’m walking with them and they catch me, what do I do?” I asked. “I can’t leave them alone.”
She hadn’t been this afraid in 31 years, since her escape El Salvador To escape war and violence.
“We lived through this war once,” said her friend, a nanny who cares for two brothers.
That nanny left Guatemala 33 years ago, also fleeing war and the constant threat of danger.
She is a US citizen and always carries her passport now. She asked that her name not be mentioned because some of her relatives are not legal residents. It helps pay rent and buy groceries for a second family because they are too afraid to go to work.
She is afraid that immigration agents will arrest her when she has children. She didn’t want them to see her cry on October 3. But once the kids got home, she got into her car and cried.
She drove to her church, lit a candle and prayed.
I asked God to protect all immigrants and all children.
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Associated Press reporter Sophia Tarin, photographer Rebecca Blackwell and videographer Laura Bargfield contributed to this report.
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