Nora Sandigo has provided the guests with lunch and lists a number of important documents: identification papers, healthcare and school documentation, immigration papers, her phone number.
Talk to your children and tell them what can happen, give them my phone number, let them learn it, she said at the lunch meeting on Sunday, the day before Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as president.
"Take security measures"
Many who are in the USA without proper documentation or on temporary permits fear that their time in the USA may soon come to an end. The incoming president Donald Trump made mass deportations one of the most important issues during the election campaign and has promised a number of measures from day one to reshape immigration policy.
You don't have to be afraid, you have to be prepared, says Nora Sandigo to the around 20 people, including small children, who are taking part in instructions on how to respond if the immigration police knock on the door.
Take security measures wherever you are.
Sandigo came to the USA in 1988. For 15 years, she has voluntarily acted as a guardian to more than 2,000 children under the age of 15.
45-year-old Erlinda from El Salvador, who came to the USA in 2013, has registered Sandigo as the guardian of her children born in the USA. She says that she has applied for asylum but has not received a response.
I'm afraid for my children's sake, that they will live with the fear of not being able to see their mother for a day, a month, a year, she says.
"Not their city"
Rumors are circulating about an operation against undocumented immigrants in Chicago as early as this week. Tom Homan, whom Trump has appointed as his "border tsar", said on Sunday in Fox News that it is not ruled out, and that it is being considered when and how it will be done.
Pastor Homero Sanchez in Chicago says that he didn't understand the fear among immigrants in the city until someone asked him to handle the sale of the family's house and other economic practicalities if they were to be deported from the country after Trump became president.
His congregation has mainly consisted of people of Mexican descent since the 1980s.
They feel that something is going to happen. This is not their city because of the threat, he says.
