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<\/p>\nAt first, Edith Rivera Courington expected her work with a pair of late enrollees would be routine.
\n\u201cMy role is supporting our newcomers,\u201d says Rivera Courington, assistant superintendent for English learners in a suburban school district that covers Westmont. \u201cWe get to know who they are, where they have come from, what their needs are. We find out what they\u2019ve been through in the process of getting here.\u201d
\nBut when Diego, 14, and his sister Rosa, 13, opened up about what drove them from central Mexico in September 2023, their story caught Rivera Courington off guard. They had lost their mother after a years-long battle with lung cancer. More recently, they had lost their father, who was gunned down while picking up the boy from school.
\n\u201cHe was murdered and it happened in front of Diego,\u201d Rivera Courington says.<\/p>\n
Rivera Courington coordinated her district\u2019s teachers and staffers to meet the siblings\u2019 academic, linguistic and emotional needs. Eventually, though, Diego and Rosa suffered another trauma. They became collateral victims of President Donald Trump\u2019s Chicago-area deportation drive.
\nTo help the children through that crisis, Rivera Courington needed more than her professional resources. She needed to draw from some values her parents had instilled in her as a kid.
\n\u201cOur responsibility is to help when help is needed,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s doing the right thing for people that, at the moment, can\u2019t do it for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diego and Rosa followed a path out of Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, that was laid by their brother, Federico, who had left a year earlier at age 18. The three siblings had an aunt in the Chicago area. They had never met her in person.
\nIn Westmont schools, Rivera Courington helped get Diego going in ninth grade and Rosa in eighth. Diego seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to life in the states \u2014 to life without his parents.
\n\u201cDiego was just so sweet and so kind and so intelligent,\u201d Rivera Courington says. \u201cHe had all these hopes and dreams. And I saw him carrying the weight of the world \u2014 just in how he talked about [having] to help his brother.\u201d
\nFederico, the brother, had found a job in a furniture factory. He was working long hours to save for an apartment he could share with Diego and Rosa. Eventually he and the two children were able to move from their aunt\u2019s place.
\nThe apartment was outside Rivera Courington\u2019s school district. She no longer had any official connection to Diego and Rosa but \u201cwould check in on them, see how they were doing,\u201d she says. One time, the kids even came to her house. She gave them a couch, table and rug.
\nThis past fall, after the Trump administration intensified its deportation efforts in the Chicago area, Rivera Courington heard about an immigration arrest affecting two former students of her district.
\n\u201cI was like, \u2018Please don\u2019t tell me it\u2019s Diego and Rosa. How can another tragedy be upon them? How is this even possible?\u2019 \u201d she recalls.
\nIt was possible. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had taken away Federico on his way to work Oct. 31. Within days, he was moved to a detention center in Greene County, Missouri.
\nFederico was the only parent Diego and Rosa had. He drove them to school. He helped them with homework. He paid the bills.<\/p>\n
Federico (left) with his sister Rosa and brother Diego in their apartment. Immigration agents arrested Federico on Oct. 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re an educator,\u201d Rivera Courington says, her voice shaking, \u201csome stories hit you both professionally and personally.\u201d
\nDiego and Rosa not only worried about their brother\u2019s fate. They faced a host of problems, beginning with their home.
\n\u201cThey could no longer stay in their apartment,\u201d Rivera Courington says. \u201cNot only are they minors, but they weren\u2019t able to pay for rent.\u201d
\nOfficials of their high school spoke with their aunt, who agreed to take them in.
\nBut the aunt and her husband had their own children, one recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, she tells WBEZ on a visit to their house. The husband\u2019s landscaping pay was their sole income. And neither he nor the aunt had permission to be in the United States.
\nAfter Federico\u2019s arrest, the aunt says in Spanish, the husband stayed home from work and the couple didn\u2019t feel safe leaving their house: \u201cWe spent three weeks at home due to fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rivera Courington caught up with Diego and Rosa and decided not to sit on the sidelines.
\n\u201cI became determined to do whatever I possibly could to give them some hope, to give them some relief, to bring some positivity into their lives, to help<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to a Tragic Story At first, Edith Rivera Courington expected her work with a pair of late enrollees would be routine. \u201cMy role is supporting our newcomers,\u201d says Rivera Courington, assistant superintendent for English learners in a suburban school district that covers Westmont. \u201cWe get to know who they are, where they have come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/5497264\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/7852x4482+0+377\/resize\/1461x834!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F92%2F41%2F50cd00a34b06b8e5759aed7fec50%2Fimmigranthelper-2601230081.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36364,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36362\/revisions\/36364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}