A daycare teacher has been released after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood last week.
Diana Santillana Galeano was released from ICE custody in Clay County, Indiana Wednesday night, according to a news release. She was at home resting Thursday, CBS News Chicago has learned.
A week earlier, on the morning of Wednesday, Nov 5, Galeano was taken away by ICE agents at the Rayito del Sol daycare at 2550 W. Addison St. Parents, children, and other staffers were there when it happened.
“We are thrilled that Ms. Santillana was released, and has been able to return home to Chicago where she belongs,” said attorney Charlie Wysong of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd., who represents Santillana Galeano. “We will continue to pursue her immigration claims to stay in the United States. We are grateful to her community for the outpouring of support over these difficult days, and ask that her privacy be respected while she rests and recovers from this ordeal.”
Galeano was to be reunited with parents from the daycare center on Friday.
“I am so grateful to everyone who has advocated on my behalf, and on behalf of the countless others who have experienced similar trauma over recent months in the Chicago area,” Santillana Galeano said in the release. “I love our community and the children I teach, and I can’t wait to see them again.”
Video last week showed two masked federal agents in plainclothes and wearing vests labeled “POLICE” inside school and daycare. A woman was heard screaming through the glass doors as the agents physically wrestle her out the door, at one point picking her up. Agents slammed the woman, face-first, into the outer door as they pushed her outside.
Other video shows more agents outside the school, their vests labeled “POLICE ICE.”
Once outside, the educator is seen being pushed against a dark grey sedan parked outside the building as agents try to handcuff her with her hands behind her back. One agent briefly goes back inside as she’s seen pointing and speaking to the other agent.
The video was quickly shared among local parents’ groups on WhatsApp and posted to social media. Adam Gonzalez, another parent whose child attends the school, filmed the aftermath of the detention. He said he started filming when he saw ICE agents force a daycare teacher into the back of a car.
Ald. Matt Martin (47th) said Galeano was taken to the Broadview ICE detention center after being detained, and that in detaining her, federal agents were inside the daycare building with no warrant. Martin, U.S. Rep Mike Quigley and U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago) all said they had seen video from inside the facility showing ICE agents indoors.
But DHS officials said she was “arrested inside a vestibule, not in the school.”
DHS would only say that no one arrests were made in front of children, and that a man who was with Galeano in the agents’ car barricaded himself in the school. None of the videos that have been shared publicly have shown anyone other than Galeano being detained, and parents who witnessed her arrest said the ICE agents left the daycare center after she was in custody.
DHS officials said Galeano was in the country illegally from Colombia and paid to smuggle her teenage children across the border this year, which they said is the crime for which she was arrested. DS claims she ran into the daycare after fleeing a car chase with federal agents, who were trying to stop and detain her.
contributed to this report.