Sitting in her Albany Park apartment Friday afternoon, Ingrid Guanume shifted her fussy 1-month-old son in one arm and cradled her phone between her shoulder and ear. The lawyers have been calling nonstop.
In the back of her mind, she worries her 4-year-old son, who has autism, will throw a tantrum again, hitting and throwing himself against the ground. He doesn’t understand what’s going on or why his dad hasn’t come home.
This has been Guanume’s chaotic routine the past few days since her husband, Brayan Plata, was detained by federal immigration agents while working a landscaping job in north suburban Skokie on Wednesday afternoon. Plata was handcuffed by masked officers and dragged into a vehicle, Guanume said.
Tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes as she recounted learning from a friend that Plata had been taken.
“My, my head hurts from thinking about him, if he is cold, if he is hungry,” Guanume said in Spanish. “My children are psychologically unwell. I am waiting for a miracle or something that can happen, having faith that he can get out. But this has changed us a lot.”
The couple, who also have a 9-year-old daughter, was nervous and scared even before Plata was detained. The increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Chicago left them wary of leaving their home to play with their kids in the park, get groceries or go to work.
But they don’t have any savings, and Plata’s income was sustaining them.
Now, Guanume is scrambling. Everything changed when agents detained her husband, whom she described as a loving, respectful man and devoted father, she said.
She’s overwhelmed with caring for her three children on top of trying to pay for legal representation and basic necessities. She spoke with him briefly Thursday, and he said he was at the ICE processing facility in Broadview before being taken to a detention center in Michigan.
He has a court hearing scheduled for Nov. 17 in Michigan.
To keep herself going, she prays and tells herself and her children that this will be temporary and Plata will come home.
Her 4-year-old is having an especially hard time, she said. She can tell something’s off with him, and he’s always asking where his dad is.
“He gets very agitated. He can’t find a way to be calm.”
Before he was detained, Plata would be greeted by his son every day when he got home from work. Guanume isn’t sure how to explain what’s happening to her son; she just tells him they have to wait and pray.
“He barely speaks, but he asks and he looks,” Guanume said. “He stands at the door, he says, ‘Daddy,’ and I tell him, ‘No, Daddy. Daddy isn’t coming. Daddy is coming tomorrow.’”
Despite being tired from long days of manual labor, Plata still took the time to read and play with his children when he got home, Guanume said. Since their youngest son was born Sept. 25, he has changed diapers and cared for the older kids.
The couple immigrated from Colombia six years ago, seeking asylum. Plata has a work permit, a driver’s license and a clean criminal record, she said. A search of Plata’s name in Cook County court records returned no results.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Plata overstayed his visa by more than six years and pointed him to a voluntary deportation program through Customs and Border Protection, in which immigrants get $1,000 and a free flight from the government to leave the country voluntarily.
The spokesperson didn’t address questions about Plata seeking asylum.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem are committed to restoring integrity to the visa program and ensuring it is not abused to allow aliens a permanent one-way ticket to remain in the U.S.,” the DHS statement reads.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” began under the pretense of targeting the “worst of the worst” criminals, but many of those detained have a clean record. U.S. citizens have also been detained.
Guanume said ICE agents and immigration enforcement officials should think twice about the “psychological damage” they do not only to detainees but to their families and especially their children.
“I would tell them that they shouldn’t be so unfair,” she said. “That first they should look at what kind of person he is before grabbing him and depriving him of his freedom. … He is not hurting anyone. He is working, providing for his food, his children, his home. They should first look to see if the person is a criminal, if the person is doing harm to society. But they shouldn’t have to take a person who is not doing harm to anyone.”
After Guanume’s daughter told school staff at Eliza Chappell Elementary School in Lincoln Square that her dad was detained, parents on the school’s mutual aid committee stepped in to help get supplies for the family. Guanume said the school, friends and family have been her main sources of support.
“Our biggest hurdle is letting the people that need the help know about us and trust us, because they don’t know who to turn to, who to trust right now,” said Audra Wunder, a parent who serves on the mutual aid committee and also works as a rapid responder on the North Side.
The parents started a GoFundMe account with an $18,000 goal. As of Friday evening, more than $10,000 had been raised.