For millions of families across America, weekend mornings start with a familiar ritual: taking the kids to soccer games.

For Walker Elementary School parent Matt Deutschman (Medill ’08), this also means coaching Wildfire, his son’s under-10 recreational soccer team. Sports allow him to bond with his children through something they can enjoy together, he said.

“As a community, we need to come together and lift one another up so that we can help raise up the next generation,” he said. “It’s all about having fun. You have fun with the kids, and they learn more life lessons than athletic lessons.”

His family’s usual Sunday morning routine was interrupted on Oct. 12 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were spotted at the Home Depot on Oakton Street, across from James Park. Wildfire was supposed to play there later that day, Deutschman’s wife Deanna said.

About an hour before kickoff, the Evanston division of the American Youth Soccer Organization emailed families of those scheduled to play at James Park and said that the day’s games were cancelled.

“This is a tough decision for us, but we, as a board, do not want to jeopardize the safety of our community in any way at the expense of playing a soccer game,” the board wrote in the email. 

Evanston AYSO Regional Commissioner Clark Alexander declined to comment for this story, citing the nonprofit’s legal obligation to remain apolitical.

Deanna Deutschman said she understood that Evanston AYSO didn’t want children to witness ICE activity. All the same, she found it difficult to explain to her son why his soccer game was canceled. It was “challenging and delicate” to scale the issue down to his level without sugarcoating the real world, she said.

Since then, federal immigration agents have operated near schools in Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and other community spaces that young families frequent — at a street corner next to Dawes Elementary School on Oct. 21, blocks from Willard Elementary School’s playground on Oct. 29 and notably, a confrontation one block from Chute Middle School on Halloween, where Border Patrol agents arrested three U.S. citizens.

Young families across Evanston have said they are struggling to figure out how to have conversations about such incidents with their own children. The increased anxiety has spurred fervent action, as several school communities have developed strategies to protect their most vulnerable members.

Team Thunder-Sharky coach and Washington Elementary School parent Josh Culley-Foster paced the sideline for his team’s last game of the fall season Sunday, encouraging his side onward as the young players jostled on the pitch. Culley-Foster treated the winners to an end-of-season banquet after full time, featuring Little Caesars for the players and a cooler of High Noons for the parents.

Heaping praise on his team, Culley-Foster had little reason to use the brass coach’s whistle dangling from his neck.

“But, you know, whistles are very versatile these days,” he said.

Culley-Foster helped draft Washington’s Wolfpack program, a walking school bus staffed by volunteer parents who accompany children to and from school if their parents don’t feel safe walking them. The Wolfpack is one of several similar programs started by parents at local schools in recent weeks.

Parents started planning the program after the Department of Homeland Security arrested an individual Sept. 10. An abnormally high number of Washington students stayed home from school that day, Culley-Foster said.

Evanston Latinos Executive Director Ricardo Villalobos said some of his organization’s partners are collaborating with District 65 schools to create safety protocols that address immigration enforcement activity. 

Some schools are open to Villalobos’ partners working inside school grounds, he said. Others are more hesitant to maintain direct ties, instead letting organizations partner with unofficial parent patrols.

“There shouldn’t be a variety (of reactions). This is a human rights issue,” he said. “We all have to stand up equally.”

In recent weeks, District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner has reiterated the district’s Safe Haven Schools policy multiple times. The district does not ask students or parents to disclose their immigration status, according to the 2017 policy.

The policy also prevents the district from collaborating with federal immigration authorities unless compelled by federal, state or local law. The district will also ensure that no one is detained on campus without a criminal warrant, and it will prevent on-campus searches based on immigration status alone, according to the policy. 

District 65 schools moved recess indoors on Halloween, Turner wrote in an email to parents, shortly before the confrontation near Chute. She added that there has not been ICE presence on District 65 school grounds, but recent activity near several schools has led to heightened concerns in the district community. 

“Our schools are and will remain safe and welcoming spaces for all, regardless of immigration status,” Turner wrote.

The increased federal immigration activity coincides with District 65’s controversial plan to close schools and consolidate programs. Washington and Dawes were at risk when the board considered closing three schools, and Willard’s Two-Way Immersion strand would close under every scenario recommended by district administration.

Willard TWI parent Bevin Seifert said she thought closing programs used by Spanish-speaking students or schools with significant Hispanic populations would send a “horrible” message. The board flipped to considering two school closures on Oct. 27, under which Kingsley Elementary School and either Willard or Lincolnwood Elementary School would close.

“It’s just awful that the Dawes community, the Washington community and our TWI community  (were) all in this position when there’s already an assault on our Hispanic community,” Seifert said.

Villalobos emphasized that immigration raids across Chicago are not new for the Latino community, referencing his own experience as a child. Raids in the 1980s and ’90s made him question his identity as a young Latino man, he said.

Young people now have access to potentially traumatizing videos of immigration enforcement through social media, creating multigenerational fear, Villalobos said.

“Before, most of the time, it was just the parents worrying about it, and now you’ve got whole households who are freaking out,” he said. “You’ve got kids who are traumatized … and this feeling of isolation is, I think, what we’re most worried about.”

That isolation is extremely difficult to repair, he said, so Evanston Latinos is working to help vulnerable families cover expenses and establish safe spaces.

Still, the nonprofit largely has to organize quietly because of the risks associated with being visible and Latino. Some individuals decide to stay home from work or school because it’s what is best for them, he said. If they do, Evanston Latinos aims to help them meet their needs.

Villalobos emphasized that federal immigration activity increasingly infringes on previously safe spaces, forcing vulnerable families to think twice before attending public events, going to the park with friends and more.

“I can’t guarantee that if I send my kid to a basketball game at the local park district, that it’s going to be a safe space for him because we haven’t organized with them,” he said. “It’s that level of detail that we are trying to organize so that we can let families know, when you go here, we’ve got folks watching.”

A Chute parent, who requested anonymity because of his work with the school’s parent patrol, said he joined the group to protect his child and their friends. 

Children are being “terrorized” by immigration enforcement who don’t “give a damn” about the local community or its children, he said.

“When I patrol during recess, I can hear the kids. They’re all playing ‘Run from ICE’ games,” he said. “They’re trying to find a way to deal with this trauma through play. It’s obscene.”

An Oakton Elementary School parent, who requested to remain anonymous because of her Mexican identity, said she has attended youth soccer games with her extended family for almost her entire life.

She hasn’t thought twice about going to soccer games, adding that she felt safe enough to not need a parent transport group for her child to attend school. However, legal status doesn’t seem to matter to federal immigration agents in encounters with people who look like her, she said. 

Even though she tries to explain it, she said her children don’t understand why people are picked up and taken away solely for their appearance. Still, her children’s sense of normalcy is gone now, she said.

“I really hope they don’t think this is normal,” she said. “Because they shouldn’t.”

At Team Thunder-Sharky’s final feast, Culley-Foster encouraged his players to continue kicking a ball through the winter months — before amending his statement to exclude any areas of the house that their parents deemed off-limits.

Culley-Foster emphasized that the more stress he has felt in the community, the more he has seen people advocate for each other.

“It feels like people are ready to fight for things they believe in and are loving the opportunities they get to be active members in the community,” he said. “This is galvanizing people in an electric sort of way.”

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