‘Get Down! Get Down! They’re Gonna See Us!’: Six Months of Hiding From ICE

At around 7:30 am on Halloween, Ava and Sam were taking their two kids to school when their upstairs neighbor rushed toward them on the street. “You shouldn’t be out right now,” she told them. ICE vans were just around the corner. Ava felt her body go numb. The day before, her coworker—another undocumented woman she cleaned houses with—told her about how she’d seen an ICE van parked behind her while she was taking her lunch break in her car. All the images Ava and Sam had been watching, the ones that popped up on their TikTok of ICE agents arresting people shopping at Home Depots and Walmarts, all the things they’d been hearing in bits and pieces from her husband’s coworkers, their caseworker, her children’s school teachers about what to do if ICE comes—it was finally here at their doorstep.

They accepted a ride from their neighbor. All day, Ava felt paranoid, like ICE was watching her. Who would take care of her young kids if she or her husband got taken? She told her boss, who ran a housekeeping business, that she felt like it was too risky to be cleaning properties; her boss agreed. At the end of the day, her boss dropped her off at home, taking side streets and alleys. Then Ava’s world grew lonelier than she’d ever known.

The ICE raids in Chicago that have terrorized immigrant neighborhoods like Ava and Sam’s have been both highly performative and extremely random. Six weeks earlier, on September 9, Greg Bovino, the G.I. Joe look-alike who previously served as ICE’s “commander-at-large,” arrived in town with a caravan of unmarked, black-tinted vans to patrol Chicago’s immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Three days later, ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas González, an undocumented father of two from Mexico who worked as a line cook, and who had no criminal record, after he tried to drive away from them. ICE officers began lurking on sidewalks, downtown, at grocery stores, at the Cook County courthouses, in parking lots, at intersections, in alleys, and in neighborhoods like Ava and Sam’s.

By the end of September, allegedly following a “tip” about reported gang activity—later found to be a complaint about squatters—ICE agents swarmed a South Side apartment building in the middle of the night, rappelling down from a Black Hawk helicopter and patrolling the sidewalk outside with masks and rifles, arresting 37 people. They kicked down doors, leafed through bookshelves, and upturned mattresses. In November, they violently pulled a Colombian teacher from the day care center where she worked, while school was in session. It began to feel like they could take anyone, at any time. Sam started to catch glimpses of the arrests and deportations from coworkers and Facebook groups. The news trickled in through Ava’s phone, where she watched video after video on TikTok. The more she clicked, the more videos appeared.

Ava, whose name I’ve changed to protect her identity, crossed the border before Donald Trump would be sworn into office for a second time. Her husband, whom I’ll call Sam, had arrived in America in 2022; paying coyotes $12,000 he’d borrowed from family members to make the seven-day journey on foot. “It’s a very heavy, heavy decision to make the choice to abandon your children and your family,” Sam told me. “You don’t know if you’ll see your family again.” After the dangerous journey, he settled in Chicago, where he found a job in construction. He worked grueling nine-hour shifts, six days a week, bringing in roughly $600 a week. He sent as much money home to Ava as he could. When he was off work, exhausted and lonely, he’d call his wife and kids on video chats. Their daughter, a baby at the time, would throw a tantrum every time. He used to put her to bed every night; now, when her mother put her to bed, she’d reach up instinctively searching for her father’s beard. When she realized it wasn’t there, she’d cry. It took a month for her to learn how to sleep again. Their older son struggled more. One day, he came home from school sobbing. Ava asked what was wrong. He had seen his friend’s father pick him up from school on his motorbike, he told her—just like his father used to pick him up. “When will we see him again?” He asked over and over.

The family weighed their options: It was too risky for Ava to cross the border alone with such young kids, and they couldn’t afford to pay another coyote. But staying in Mexico felt equally dangerous. Drug cartels patrolled their town, recruiting kids as young as 13; police offered little protection. One day, Ava got a panicked call from her brother. His two children had been secuestro exprés, “express-kidnapped”—a common occurrence in their area of Mexico where gang members lure young kids with candy or sometimes threats, then hold them hostage until the parents pay for their release. Ava’s brother scrounged together $3,000—selling everything he owned, including his small home, to get his kids 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 offers emergency asylum to people from countries with ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or extraordinary conditions. For many, it is often the first step to full asylum status. (The Trump administration has moved to revoke the status for 11 countries and does not consider Mexico to be a qualifying country.) Ava applied during the Biden presidency and, after about a year of waiting, was notified that she’d been granted an interview in the United States that would expire in 15 days. Frantically, she packed what she could in a large suitcase, gathered the kids on their first airplane ride, then took a taxi to El Paso, where she found herself, quite suddenly, before a phalanx of US Border Patrol officers.

Border Patrol agents took Ava’s DNA and biometrics and confiscated her passport. They did a body exam and made the family strip down to their innermost layers. But Ava still felt that the Border Patrol agents treated them warmly. “I didn’t think they were rude or cold or harsh,” she recalled. She’d heard the interview could take all day, but by noon she was free to walk out of the building and into Texas. She called Sam, who booked the family plane tickets to Chicago. He gave her instructions on what to do at the airport, where everything was in English—a language she’d yet to grasp. She navigated it in a maze of confusion, pulling out her boarding pass every so often so someone could point her in the right direction. After the plane dipped to the misty ground at Chicago’s Midway Airport, they cleared customs and found Sam waiting for them.

“I was so happy,” Ava told me. “After you don’t see your family for two years, it was thrilling.” Sam added, “ We hugged each other very, very tightly.”

Chicago was cold, and a little overwhelming. But it was beautiful. They took a drive by the lake. “It’s so big!” their daughter squealed. The kids had lots of questions: What temperature was the lake? Could they swim in it? When? Soon after she arrived, the family splurged on an Uber to Chicago’s sprawling downtown, where they stared at themselves in The Bean, a life-size lima-bean-shaped piece of public art that reflected the city skyline behind them. Their daughter had been diagnosed with a developmental condition, and they’d managed to find a clinic to assist with her special needs. They started taking English classes. Chicago’s harsh winter turned to spring, which yielded a beautiful summer. Every day was memorable. “We still felt comfortable enough to go out, go for walks, go to the store, get groceries,” Ava told me when we met at her place last December. And then, nearly a year into her new life in America, the ICE raids began. “Right now, frankly, we’re just really scared.”