Daniel Rios was at lunch at John Hancock College Prep when he got a message from his mother that haunted him the rest of the day.

She was anxious after hearing that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were near their neighborhood. Rios, a first-generation American, said he felt helpless. His mind wandered from his schoolwork, dreading the next message would bring terrible news.

“All day, I’ve been thinking about what she said, and all I can say is, ‘Be careful,’” Rios said. “It made me shut down, in a sense, and constantly look over and make sure I don’t get any kind of notification from my phone saying, ‘Oh, they’ve gotten me.’”

Rios was among more than a dozen teens from across Chicago who participated in a roundtable discussion last week about how immigration enforcemen

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