When immigration agents arrested a Chicago mother, a stranger stepped in to care for her 3 kids

When the 17-year-old let Isabel Conde visit, he and his sisters had been on their own for nearly four weeks.

The boy and the girls, ages 14 and 6, had been fending for themselves in the family’s Southwest Side apartment since immigration agents arrested their mother and moved her to a detention center in Kentucky.

“What I noticed right away was the girls huddled up together in the door frame of one of the bedrooms,” Conde says, recalling their embrace at the sight of an adult stranger in the home.

“I wanted to get all the basic facts,” Conde says.

“Financially, what was going to happen with their apartment? Medically, did they have health insurance? And, legally, what was going on with the mom’s case?”

During President Donald Trump’s second term, immigration agents have taken away the parents of thousands of U.S.-born children. Some of those kids, who are citizens, have moved in with relatives or family friends. Others have landed with strangers or languished in shelters.

The people who have opened their homes to care for these children often don’t know how long they'll be needed or what emotional fallout they’ll face when the kids leave.

Conde, 27, heard the kids were living alone from a relative who came from the mother’s hometown in Puebla, Mexico.

The mother, 37, had entered the United States as a teenager in 2006.

All three of her children were born in Chicago. She worked in a factory and raised them on her own in Chicago Lawn.

The mother had no criminal record, but the immigration agents arrested her on Oct. 12, near their home. WBEZ agreed not to name the woman or her children to protect their safety.

When Conde visited the apartment weeks later, she started a list of all the adults in the kids’ lives — the people who might be able to take them in.

She learned the father of the two teens had returned to Mexico. The 6-year-old’s father remained in Chicago, but Conde didn’t think he was “able to care for her.”

Conde approached the kids’ aunts and uncles. She tried neighbors and their godparents. “No one was able to take all three of them,” she says.

Conde had worked for immigrant children as a paralegal. So she knew it was only a matter of time before someone called in the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. The kids could end up in foster care or a shelter. They could be split apart.

A few nights after meeting the kids, Conde got a call from them.

“They were in a park and they shared with me that they left their home and were afraid because the father of the youngest was telling them he was going to separate them,” she says.

Conde was with her own mother: “We got in the car and drove immediately to that park.”

It was dark. The kids were pulling a wagon, loaded with clothes and a blanket. They were planning to sleep outside. The 17-year-old was pacing.

“They were scared,” Conde says.

Conde’s home, a Little Village apartment, had just two bedrooms. She decided it was big enough for all of them.

But she didn’t want to be accused of kidnapping. She wanted it known that she was taking in the kids for their safety.

So Conde and her mom packed them into the car and drove to the nearest police station.

When Conde got there, the father of the 6-year-old was already there. He wanted to take her, but the girl wanted to stay with her sister and brother.

“The police said we could figure this out between us or they could call the state,” Conde says, referring to that Illinois child welfare agency.

It took an hour but Conde, speaking Spanish, reached an agreement with the father in front of the officers: She would keep the children together and he could talk to his daughter on the phone whenever he wanted and arrange visits.

“I was able to take the kids to my house that night,” Conde says.

Conde’s own father had two extra beds — a queen and a twin. He brought them over and spread them across the living room, forming a “megabed” along with her couch, she says.

Conde brought in the kids’ wagon, full of clothes, and started a load of laundry.

She thought she would shelter the kids for just a few days, long enough to identify an adult who was willing and able to take them in.

Conde also took charge of getting their mother out of immigration detention.

The family had already spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer whose main advice was asking the mother to sign papers for a “voluntary” deportation, Conde says.

To Conde, that was a nonstarter. When she managed to reach the mother by phone, she says, “the first thing I told her was, ‘Do not sign anything. You have rights.’”

Conde found a pro-bono attorney.

But an immigration judge refused to release the mother on bond. So the attorney turned to the federal court system.

The legal battles stretched over weeks, then months.

Conde did her best for the kids.

“I would drive them to and from school every day,” she says, and would make sure they received the academic and social services they needed.

“Once we got temporary guardianship paperwork signed by their mom, I was able to start making sure that all of the medical needs were being met,” she says. “Then I got them into mental health therapy, each of them, because they had experienced a severe trauma.”

“My mom would come several nights a week and help me care for the kids,” Conde says. “She’s the art teacher at Ravenswood Elementary School, and they held a fundraiser for us. And I also tapped into community networks and mutual aid funds.”

With all the help, Conde could pay the rent on the family’s apartment, so it would be there if the kids’ mother were released.

“We took them to the ZooLights, the trampoline park, the children’s museum, the aquarium,” Conde says.

“The youngest grew out of her clothes right away,” Conde says. “She just hit a growth spurt. We had to get new clothes for everybody.”

“They had tamales with us at Thanksgiving, gifts for Christmas to open,” she says. “We just really made them a part of our family.”

But Conde was under increasing stress. Less than two weeks into the new year, she started graduate school. It wasn’t easy with the three children in her apartment.

“I would pray every night and ask that these children could be reunited with their mother,” she says.

On January 27, two-and-a-half months after Conde first took in the kids, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled the mother’s detention was unlawful. He ordered her immediate release.

The attorney arranged for volunteers in Kentucky to drive the mother to a spot in Indiana that Conde could reach.

“I immediately rented a van and picked up the kids from school and was like, ‘Guys, let’s go get your mom!’” Conde says.

The family was finally reunited.

Conde drove them back to her apartment. Her own folks came over and made the mother pozole, a Mexican stew.

“We gave her fresh clothes and then she just fell asleep with her kids in my living room,” Conde says.

The mother and kids stayed at Conde’s place a few days before returning to their home. It was ready for them because Conde had raised funds to pay the rent since October.

“They were back in their home and back together,” she says.

But Conde’s apartment suddenly felt empty.

“I loved them, and it was the goal all along to reunite them with their mom, but I missed them because we were all like a family for a while,” Conde says, her voice wavering. “I was really sad.”

This spring, the 17-year-old is graduating from high school. The 14-year-old is having a quinceañera. The younger girl is finishing kindergarten.

The mother’s immigration case remains pending but the next hearing has been postponed to 2028, giving her time to plan for any outcome. In the meantime, she has qualified for a work permit.

Conde has wrapped up her first semester of grad school. She’s looking forward to summer classes.

She gets to see the kids every now and then, but she still feels the loss.

“After protecting them for so long, I wanted to just keep being with them all the time,” Conde says. “But I knew that it was just the way of things and the way of love.”

She had to let them go.