Chicago families grapple with trauma following federal agents’ immigration sweeps
On a sunny November afternoon, Illinois State Rep. Lilian Jiménez, her eyes red with tears, addressed a crowd gathered at a press conference. “We are not okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “This type of trauma that’s being put on our community [will] take all of us to change.”
That morning, federal agents had dragged Diana Santillana Galeano — Ms. Diana to families — from a Roscoe Village daycare as terrified parents, children, and teachers watched.
“This weekend, our president said they haven’t gone far enough,” Jiménez said. “When I saw those words, I almost shut down because I have been living it for the last 30 to 60 days. What I understand he’s telling these officers is to go harder, to be more vicious, to degrade these communities even more.”
In the weeks before federal agents scaled back their operation in Chicago, a constant flood of headlines about their presence dominated local media coverage: “ICE officer kills man in Chicago suburb during arrest attempt”; “Federal Agent Pointed Gun at My Head: Illinois Lawmaker Hoan Huynh Denounces ICE Raids in Chicago”; “South Shore Residents Return To Ransacked Apartments After ICE Raid: ‘It Looks Like Hell.’”
About a week before Operation Midway Blitz ended, agents created one of the biggest headlines yet with Rayito de Sol — a Spanish-immersion preschool and daycare across Addison Street from Lane Tech College Prep on the North Side.
Agents forced their way into the building at 7 a.m. and aggressively dragged out one of the teachers. Staff rushed to comfort the young children already present. Masked agents moved quickly through the lobby, their presence heavy and intimidating. Early sunlight streamed through the windows, illuminating fear and confusion — a routine morning drop-off turned chaotic.
“She was not peacefully taken away,” says Gloria (a pseudonym), who was there with her 2-year-old.
Delia Ramirez, U.S. representative for Illinois’ 3rd congressional district, arrived at Rayito soon after the incident. At a press conference that afternoon, she shared what she heard from teachers. “One of them, pregnant, afraid of the impact from today, [is] going and hiding. Another one, someone that I personally know, hiding with a child she was taking care of because she was afraid that she may die today, while protecting and taking care of someone else’s children.”
That night, at a rally Rayito’s parents and local politicians organized in a park near the school, Gloria still felt stuck in what had transpired that morning. “I’m overwhelmed with frustration, anger, anxiety for what this all means — what it means for the daycare, other daycares, other schools, everyone, the whole community,” she says.
She cried as agents took the teacher away, and the children were visibly upset. “Thankfully, there were other kids around. Kids being kids and playing around made the environment feel less intense,” she says, adding, “It was chaos.”
For another Rayito parent, Maria Guzmán, PhD, processing the incident has been emotionally complicated. Guzmán, who is also a developmental psychologist with Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services, says, “If you lose a coworker or community member, the loss is a closed door. But this is something that could continue happening.” Federal agents’ pursuit of people, whether in Chicago or elsewhere, is ongoing. Each encounter reopens wounds, leaving parents, teachers, and children on edge.
Lingering impact
During the two months of Operation Midway Blitz, federal agents swept into Chicago and its suburbs. According to news reports, they used tear gas 49 times, including near homes, schools, and community gatherings. The United Nations’ Chemical Weapons Convention, signed in 1997, prohibits the use of tear gas.
Recent data obtained through a judicial warrant shows that of the 614 people federal agents detained in the Chicago area, only 3% had criminal convictions. A judge recently ordered the release of 600 of those arrested.
Though the majority of federal agents have left Chicago for now, the impact of their time here lingers. National data and peer-reviewed research warn of the long-term risks for children caught up in such enforcement actions. A meta-analysis of more than 9,600 children detained across various settings found 42% experienced depression and 32% post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the general population, 4% of children have depression, and 11% have anxiety, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts say these findings likely underestimate the trauma U.S.-citizen and mixed-status children experience when they witness raids, even if authorities do not detain them.
Immigration enforcement raids and family separations can worsen physical and mental health for adults and children, according to a 2024 analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. This includes anxiety, depression, and PTSD. And the potential reach of people impacted is broad. The American Immigration Council estimates that in 2018, 4.4 million U.S.-citizen children lived with at least one undocumented parent and 6.1 million with at least one undocumented family member.
At Rayito, parents and community members are working together to respond. Guzmán and others launched a watch network to monitor the school. “The way these teachers care for kids is above and beyond,” she says. “And we want to take care of the teachers. We’re interwoven in a way that had not been there before.”
Administrators have offered mental health support. But Guzmán says that mental health “can be taboo,” especially in immigrant communities. People process trauma differently — some withdraw, others talk, and many quietly bear the stress. Caretakers can only do their jobs when they feel safe, she says, and that safety should be a priority.
The school reopened the following Monday, though the teacher remained in custody. For parents like Gloria and Guzmán, reopening didn’t erase the damage.
“These teachers went through a really traumatic time,” Guzmán says. “But people need childcare. People need to work.”
Meanwhile, elementary schools tend to be more prepared. They have lockdown procedures, during which students keep quiet and hide under desks or in closets. “This is such a unique scenario. There’s not a protocol or recommendation,” Guzmán says.
State Rep. Jiménez has been working to change that through a childcare center provision in HB 1312. “So many people didn’t know that we were going to get to this point, but some of us saw the writing on the wall,” Jiménez said at the press conference.
The bill instructs childcare centers to understand their rights, lock their doors, and train staff in handling law enforcement encounters. It also requires that the centers keep emergency contact information on file for families, for “not if, but when,” Jiménez says.
Still, Guzmán wonders how to explain to children that they can trust some law enforcement officers, while others may forcibly take the people charged with caring for them.
A chaotic pattern
Though the event at Rayito de Sol made national headlines, it was one of the last violent incidents in a string of episodes across the Chicago area. A few days earlier, on Oct. 30, Border Patrol agents chased two individuals into Warren Township High School in north suburban Gurnee.
In an email to parents, Superintendent Denny Woestman outlined a timeline based on his review of video footage. He described a black truck pulling into campus, pursued by federal agents in multiple vehicles. “A student is in the crosswalk as the truck pulls in but moves out of the way to safety,” he wrote.
The truck’s occupants ran through the school’s entrance underpass as masked agents chased them. One man “runs up the ramp to exterior classroom door D6. Students on the ramp who are actively walking between their main campus classroom and their Transition Center classroom move to the side,” Woestman wrote. Two masked agents followed the man into the school.
At 8:19 a.m., “an agent points pepper spray at community and staff members who had gathered nearby,” he wrote.
Wendy Duvall (a pseudonym), whose freshman attends the school, says she was livid when she read the email. “These untrained agents are doing a high-speed chase toward a school. I’m pretty sure cops are at least trained to avoid high-speed chases these days, let alone chase them toward a school,” she says.
Also, during Operation Midway Blitz, agents shot at least two people; one died, a father who had just dropped off his children at school. Charges against the survivor, 30-year-old Marimar Martinez — shot five times by an agent — were dropped after video footage contradicted the Department of Homeland Security’s narrative. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum texted coworkers.
Agents also aggressively arrested a Chicago alderperson who arrived at Humboldt Park Health to ask if they had a warrant for her constituent. The man was in the hospital with an injury from the agents’ efforts to detain him.
At the rally following the Rayito incident, Erika Sánchez, a local author whose daughter attended Rayito de Sol until she aged out, said her heart is breaking. “All these children have been traumatized by what has happened, to see their teacher dragged out so violently as if she were not a human.”
Sánchez said the incident left her enraged, as it did many others. “A lot of us are afraid to go outside. I can’t eat. I feel sick,” she said. “This is a collective trauma that we’re going to have to reckon with for a very long time. It’s really wearing us down. This rage is hard to carry.”
Fear and fallout
Clinical social worker and therapist Lisa Dadabo, who practices on Chicago’s South Side and in Logan Square, says the raids have triggered widespread trauma, particularly in communities of color already bearing disproportionate burdens.
“When you are kidnapping workers from Home Depot parking lots, surrounding elementary schools, kidnapping teachers from daycare centers, throwing tear gas at babies’ and children’s Halloween parades — it’s pretty clear your aim is to terrorize and confuse the public,” she says. “But the response has often been more unity, which is really beautiful.”
The agents’ presence has Dadabo feeling anxious, frustrated, angry, and scared. “And if I’m feeling that way as a white woman, I can only begin to imagine how my Latino, Black, Asian, and Indigenous neighbors — whether citizen, immigrant, or refugee — feel.”
Some clients she sees — including formerly undocumented individuals — say they try not to think about the raids. Others turn to community and activism as a form of survival. Dadabo calls that “a kind of self-care.” Supporting others gives her purpose amid chaos, too.
“Supporting others is a privilege and an honor,” she says. “I felt similarly during the lockdown phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. Helping others make sense of a terrifying unknown forced me to have to figure out how to cope more effectively myself.”
At the Rayito rally, Hannah Kardon, a pastor at United Church of Rogers Park, told the hundreds gathered: “The best medicine for the pain you’re feeling is to find one thing you can do for your community. One person can’t do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Not far from Rayito, Jeannie Monroy, a parent at Bell Elementary School, recently started a support group for families, school staff, and neighbors. “It’s building community,” she says. “It’s about letting people throughout the city know we’re with you. It’s also about teaching our children what this is about.”
Monroy tears up as she describes her children’s reactions to the federal agents’ presence over the past two months. Her kindergartener doesn’t grasp what’s happening. “Sometimes, when we think it might not be safe to be out, she doesn’t quite understand it,” she says. “And she shouldn’t have to.”
Monroy’s older son wonders whether he’s a target — and worries about others in the community. On their way to the Rayito rally, he saw a street vendor and asked, “Why is she out?” wondering if she was safe. That her son even considered that question, Monroy says, still haunts her.
Her partner, Fernando Trejo, says the raids — and even the threat of them — erode everyday life. One morning, helicopters circled overhead. Trejo was working from home. He told his boss, “I can’t focus. I can’t work.”
For Guzmán, the raids have forced a reckoning about how to move forward. A week after the Rayito crisis, she focused on her young daughters, ordered pizza, inflated an air mattress in the living room, and tried to create a sense of safety.
“I’m going to continue using my voice,” she says. “But the influence I really feel I have is on my two children and nieces and nephews — giving them tools, modeling being a good human by taking care of your neighbors and using your voice to speak up when you see something wrong.”
She does it for her parents, too. “They came here to give us a better life,” she says. “A better life is being able to use your voice.”
Guzmán’s voice may have helped expedite Diana Santillana Galeano’s release. On Nov. 13, Santillana Galeano’s attorney said she had returned to Chicago from ICE custody in Indiana.
In a public statement, Santillana Galeano said, “I am so grateful to everyone who has advocated on my behalf, and on behalf of the countless others who have experienced similar trauma over recent months in the Chicago area. I love our community and the children I teach, and I can’t wait to see them again.”
An award-winning journalist, Katie has written for Chicago Health since 2016 and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief.
