PHOTO ESSAY: Chicago’s children are getting caught in the chaos of immigration crackdowns

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.

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.

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. ___

This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.