HIDING IN AMERICA

For the past six months, a family in Chicago has been terrified to leave their apartment.

- BY MADDY CROWELL

When I arrived at Ava and Sam's front steps last December, every shade was drawn-as if nobody lived there at all.

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.