‘Get Down! Get Down! They’re Gonna See Us!’: Six Months of Hiding From ICE
#ICE #deportation #undocumented immigrants #hiding #immigration enforcement #family separation #asylum
📌 Key Takeaways
- A family has been hiding from ICE for six months, fearing deportation.
- They live in constant fear, taking extreme measures to avoid detection.
- The situation highlights the human impact of immigration enforcement policies.
- Their story reflects broader struggles of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
A family in Chicago has been terrified to leave their apartment. Agents could be anywhere.
🏷️ Themes
Immigration, Fear, Family
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Maddy Crowell The Big Story Mar 24, 2026 6:00 AM ‘Get Down! Get Down! They’re Gonna See Us!’: Six Months of Hiding From ICE A family in Chicago has been terrified to leave their apartment. Agents could be anywhere. Save this story Save this story 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 work...
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