My Daughter Lives In A War Zone

       This is my daughter, Claire, with her husband, Miguel.

     Miguel and Claire live in Chicago in the formerly pleasant, quiet, diverse Logan Square neighborhood,

...in a cozy little house that they share with their two kitties, Frank,

...and Rosie.

    In the summer their backyard is filled with sunflowers,

...and morning glories.

      Claire is an emergency disaster nurse,

...who was an Ebola fighter in Sierra Leone,

...has worked in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh,

...and has given training seminars in a hospital in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

     Claire has worked in medical clinics and orphanages in Haiti,​

...sometimes with Miguel,

...and she has worked in a Haitian refugee camp located in a landfill in the Dominican Republic, 

...a homeless encampment in that country, and before going to nursing school she spent a year of service work in Nicaragua,

...and she did several service trips to El Salvador.
      Claire has been on post-hurricane disaster teams in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and the Bahamas.

​       Whenever Claire has been away on one of her medical missions I've been asked if I was worried for her safety. But in truth, I never have been worried about her. After all, she was in disaster zones, but never in a war zone.
       Until now. Now my daughter and her husband are living in a war zone in Chicago created by roving bands of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, armed masked thugs decked out like storm troopers who have been terrorizing the once peaceful streets of Logan Square, as well as other heavily Hispanic Chicago neighborhoods. 

      These goons in tactical gear have been sicced upon Chicago by Donald Trump, supposedly part of his anti-undocumented immigrant campaign, though, Chicago being 1,500 miles from the U.S. southern border, this is in truth just another act in his revenge circuit against his enemies. Evidently he considers the whole city of Chicago his enemy. 
       According to Claire, ICE agents don't patrol her neighborhood on foot, but rather in SUV's with dark-tinted windows from which they'll throw tear gas or flash bang grenades at brown-skinned people, as they've done several times at the Rico Fresh Market a few blocks from Miguel and Claire's house. ​

...and also around the neighborhood school.

    Claire says she's also seen the ICE SUV's circling the Cermak Fresh, the Mexican market where she and Miguel shop, and where the walls are whimsically painted to look like houses.

       The agents' other tactic is to jump out of their vehicles en masse, grab, assault, or otherwise go after their intended target whom they'll throw into their SUV's. Then they whisk off. Claire calls it Flash Terror.
       She sees the SUV's circling her own block. She hears the flash bangs and smells the gun powder. She sees and hears the Blackhawk helicopters flying overhead, another tactic purely to stir up more terror. And Claire worries and worries about Miguel - who is an American citizen - that he might be scooped up while riding his bike to or from work by an ICE patrol out looking for another target, undocumented,  documented, American citizen, it doesn't matter. 
​      Claire and Miguel don't own a car, they usually bike to their jobs and anywhere else they need to go. 

        A new verb has been added to the American English lexicon: to be disappeared by ICE agents. I means to be made to vanish without a word of notification to one's loved ones. One could be missing for days or weeks.        
         Last week I received this text from Claire:

     
​ And a few days ago she posted this:

       And so now, right here in the United States of America, in the heartland of the American Midwest, I have to worry everyday about my daughter and son-in-law. I have to text my daughter every morning to make sure she and Miguel arrived safely to work and every night make sure they've arrived home safely. And I have to worry that they might be arrested by vindictive ICE agents while doing their school watches. 
        And I can't stop worrying about my my loved ones or wrap my head around why I have to worry about them now.