Chicago students feeling fear, frustration amid ICE raids and threats of National Guard deployment

Daniel Rios was at lunch at John Hancock College Prep when he got a message from his mother that haunted him the rest of the day.

She was anxious after hearing that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were near their neighborhood. Rios, a first-generation American, said he felt helpless. His mind wandered from his schoolwork, dreading the next message would bring terrible news.

“All day, I’ve been thinking about what she said, and all I can say is, ‘Be careful,’” Rios said. “It made me shut down, in a sense, and constantly look over and make sure I don’t get any kind of notification from my phone saying, ‘Oh, they’ve gotten me.’”

Rios was among more than a dozen teens from across Chicago who participated in a roundtable discussion last week about how immigration enforcement and the threat of a National Guard deployment was affecting their mental health.

They expressed feelings of powerlessness, frustration, fear and a deepening desire to become more involved with their communities. The students, representing more than 10 schools across the city, also shared ways they can avoid becoming overwhelmed.

The event was held in the Loop and organized by Communities United along with Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, Mikva Challenge and Hana Center.

Tykwon Billups, a freshman at the University of Illinois Chicago, said many of his close friends in college share Rios’ angst.

“They’re trying to pursue education but with the fear of their family at home … being scared that one day they might get a call that their mother or father isn’t at home any more,” Billups said. “That fear is so deep inside of them that they can’t effectively grow as a person or grow academically because it's looming over them as a cloud.”

Billups said he’s also affected when he sees the impact on his friends and wants to help but doesn’t know how or if he can.

“It’s hard being that outside person knowing that you can’t do anything,” he said.

Other teens talked about the negative emotions they feel when seeing some of the reactions to the raids on social media.

“People are talking about, ‘Oh, I voted for this,’ but when you put it into perspective it’s like: Are you voting to have families taken away? Are you voting to have children getting lost throughout that deportation?” said Jessica Garcia, who also attends Hancock College Prep.

President Donald Trump has made repeated threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have said deploying troops would not help prevent crime and have called for de-escalation.

Students said they are frustrated at what they said would be a misuse of federal dollars. They’d rather see investment in after-school programs, youth-centered gathering spaces and violence prevention organizations.

Bernart Babatinca, a student at Mather High School, said it’s the wrong strategy to put boots on the ground and more people behind bars.

“They think that if we just throw everybody in jail, like they’ll learn their lesson, throw all the bad people out,” Babatinca said. “That’s not how we solve issues.”

He wondered how leaders could be making decisions that affect young people without getting their input — or by ignoring it.

“Youth need to be at the table when these decisions are made,” he said. “A lot of these decisions affect us, and we’re not even there to see these decisions being made. It makes me feel like they don’t really care about us.”

The group also offered ways teens can bolster their mental well-being, including becoming more involved with community organizations for those who want to feel like they are making a difference. Other students suggested participating in after-school activities or joining clubs.

Karen Orozco, a student at Back of the Yards College Prep, said it's also important to spend time with loved ones.

“Surrounding myself with my friends and my family and spending time with them gets my mind off a lot of the things that are happening,” she said, adding that talking through feelings “is a good way to know how to support each other.”