Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods. Sign up for its free daily newsletter. Video of the detainment can be found here.
NORTH CENTER — Hundreds of neighbors gathered Wednesday to demand that federal immigration agents stay out of Chicago schools and daycares after agents took a daycare teacher from a North Center facility earlier in the day.
About 7 a.m. Wednesday, three federal agents entered Rayito de Sol daycare, 2550 W. Addison St., and detained a teacher while parents and children were present. Parents said the incident was “traumatizing.”
Ald. Matt Martin’s 47th Ward office coordinated with North Side community groups, including One Northside and Protect Rogers Park, to stage a rally Wednesday night against immigration agents targeting educators. People filled the Northcenter Town Square, 4100 N. Damen Ave., while holding anti-ICE signs and chanting, “No hate, no fear. Everyone is welcome here.”
Neighbors, including parents and elected officials, shared their outrage over what happened at Rayito de Sol — and what is happening across Chicago.“We had masked ICE agents follow a daycare educator into the daycare, where there were parents. There were children. They dragged an educator outside of her place of employment,” Martin said. “As they were doing so, she said, ‘I have papers.’ People who are working with her came to her aid because that is what we do in the 47th Ward.”
The teacher, called “Ms. Diana” by parents, works with infants and is also a mother, said Tara Goodarzi, who has a child at Rayito de Sol daycare.
“We are full of sadness, but we are also filled with rage. Diana was targeted — stolen — on her way to care for our children by armed intruders from a private business without a warrant,” Goodarzi said. “They did this during school hours when children were present. These agents care little for the safety of our children.
”Rayito de Sol is a Spanish-immersion preschool for children ages 6 weeks to 6 years. Maria Guzman, who has two children at the center, described the incident as a “punch in the gut.”
“Every single one of the daycare workers is afraid,” she said. “Imagine taking your child to a daycare where they are now at risk of their teachers leaving them in the class because they have been detained for being Brown, for speaking Spanish.
“I have taken them to a daycare where they are immersed in their culture, where they are cared for by people who are like aunts and grandmothers to my children. And for this to be my reality, for this to be a reality for all the parents standing here, is insane.”
The agents had followed the woman as she drove to her job and chased her inside the daycare and preschool, Martin told Block Club after the incident. The teacher got into the daycare’s vestibule, but the agents “tore her away,” Martin said. The agents, who were armed but did not draw their weapons, pushed other people who were looking to intervene, he said.
Agents also inquired about other staff inside the center, disputing a claim from a Homeland Security spokesperson that the officers did not “target” a daycare, elected officials said at a press conference.
Workers became afraid to come in, and the center closed for the day, parents said.
Nathaniel Meadow, a parent at Rayito de Sol, said parents arriving during the incident left their kids in their cars “to spare them from their teachers crying.” A crowd of parents formed by the agents shouting “shame.”
Several teachers fled with a student and hid in a back of a pickup truck, “terrified of being found,” Meadow said.
“They weren’t sure what was going on. ICE, an attack on the school — they didn’t know,” Meadow said.
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