CHICAGO (AP) — Just before noon on a sunny Friday earlier this month, federal immigration agents threw tear gas canisters onto a busy Chicago street, just outside of an elementary school and a children’s play cafe.
Parents, teachers and caregivers rushed to shield children and have been grappling ever since with how to protect them when masked men in unmarked SUVs show up unannounced in neighborhoods across this city.
A half-dozen toddlers were sitting in the window of the Luna y Cielo Play Cafe, where children learn Spanish as they play, on Oct. 3 when a white SUV rolled down their street in Logan Square, a historically Hispanic neighborhood that’s been steadily gentrifying for years.
A person walks past Funston Elementary School in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A message in both English and Spanish is displayed in the window of Luna y Cielo Play Cafe, facing a street where federal immigration agents deployed tear gas in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Vanessa Aguirre-Avalos, owner of Luna y Cielo Play Cafe, wipes tears after reading a letter from parent Molly Kucich to her congressperson about the day federal immigration agents deployed tear gas in the street outside the cafe where children learn Spanish as they play in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Cafe owner Vanessa Aguirre-Ávalos ran outside to see what was happening, as the children’s nannies hustled them to a back room.
“These kids are traumatized,” Aguirre-Ávalos said. “Even if ICE stops doing what they’re doing right now, people are going to be traumatized.”
Weeks later, families — even those not likely in danger of being rounded up in immigration raids — say they remain terrified, and many asked that they not be identified out of fear it would make them targets.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Border Patrol agents were “impeded by protesters” during a targeted enforcement operation in which one man was arrested.
When the final bell rang at Funston Elementary School, children emerged to find dozens of neighbors lining the sidewalk. The neighbors scanned the streets for unmarked SUVs and masked men. They also signed up to come back every morning and afternoon, to schools across this community, carrying whistles in case they need to sound the alert.
A federal employee, who did not want to be identified for fear of workplace retaliation, poses for a portrait in Palmer Square Park, near where he and other neighborhood volunteers stand watch outside schools during student arrival and dismissal hours to watch for Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles, in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
One father of two young children, a furloughed federal worker who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution at his job, said as a white man, he feels a responsibility to take action: “People are targeted based on their appearance. They’re being asked to produce papers. It’s not right.”
Now, every utility pole is plastered with anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement stickers and instructions for what to do if detained. Supplies of free whistles disappear quickly from street library boxes and the counters of businesses sporting “ICE not welcome” signs in their windows.
On Friday mornings, parents walking their children to Funston are greeted by first grade teacher Maria Heavener and other members of the Chicago Teachers Union holding signs of support in English and Spanish.
“You don’t mess with the kids. You don’t go near the schools,” Heavener said.
The brick buildings of Funston Elementary School, right, stands in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, with downtown in the background, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A 6-year-old girl plays with a ferret inside a beauty salon near Funston Elementary School in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A student heads home from school past “Abolish ICE” graffiti scrawled on a post across the street from Funston Elementary School, in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Drivers navigate past businesses outside Funston Elementary School in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A glass of free whistles sits alongside instructions on how to use them to alert others when federal immigration agents are spotted in the area, inside a sports bar in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A Chicago Police Department car is reflected in the window of Luna y Cielo Play Cafe, where a framed picture is displayed of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez who was killed in an interaction with federal immigration enforcement (ICE) agents, as part of a Mexican Day of the Dead altar in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A Mexican flag hangs at a home in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Signs saying immigrants are welcome and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are not, hang in the window of a sports bar in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, down the road from Funston Elementary School, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Children line up to enter Funston Elementary School in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, at the start of the school day, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Neighborhood volunteer Amber Young wears a “Migra Watch” tee-shirt as she looks out for federal immigration agents during school dismissal at Funston Elementary School, in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Two-year-old Ellie Bashinski wears a dress-up outfit as she plays inside Luna y Cielo Play Cafe, where kids learn and practice the Spanish language as they play, in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
First grade teacher Maria Heavener holds a sign that reads in Spanish, “The people, united, will never be defeated,” as she participates in Sidewalk Solidarity, a weekly show of support by Chicago Teachers Union members for the school’s immigrant community in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A Funston Elementary School student wears a Minecraft Survival Mode backpack as he arrives for school in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.
