Ann Salas laid out toys, clothes, furniture and appliances on her Skokie driveway Friday morning, selling everything in preparation for permanently leaving the United States.
Some shoppers were happy to just give her cash, because her 49-year-old husband, who was brought here from Guatemala as a 5-year-old, was deported to that country last month. She plans to take their young son to Mexico to reunite with her husband, Antony “Tony” Salas, and live there as a family.
A check of court records in Cook County and San Francisco County, California, where Antony Salas lived for a time, did not show any arrests for him.
The family doesn’t plan on coming back, though Ann Salas and the couple’s 3-year-old son are U.S. citizens, and Antony Salas has lived in the U.S. for decades.
After Antony Salas spent a grueling month, from his seizure on Aug. 13 to his deportation Sept. 13, in three different ICE facilities in three states, Ann Salas was troubled.
“Racism has always run deep and it’s getting worse against more people… I don’t want to put my son back into a situation like that again,” Ann Salas said.
“He’s (her son) got a Hispanic name, he looks Hispanic… And so as a parent, you try to figure out what is the best environment in life that I can give to my child long-term, and he needs his dad. He needs both of us.”
U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky’s office tried to help Ann Salas get more information when Antony Salas was detained, and Cook County Commissioner Josina Morita provided the family practical help, including, as a private citizen, starting a GoFundMe for them.
‘Someone turned him in’
The situation began when U.S. Department of Homeland Security officers detained Antony Salas as he and his family were leaving a therapist’s office in Chicago, Ann Salas recalls. It was a targeted detainment, she said, because the officers knew his name and nickname and had a picture of him. Someone he knew turned him in, she said.
For the next month, Antony Salas was held in overcrowded, dirty detention centers where access to food and water was limited, according to Ann Salas, who was able to communicate with him through an app.
Antony Salas’ hands and feet were shackled during transportation from Broadview to Greene County Jail in southwestern Missouri, and from that facility to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana. Ann Salas said he didn’t try to fight his removal order, and his family paid $2,500 for an attorney to keep his ICE hearings on schedule and in the locations they were promised.
Antony Salas owned a business, Salas Painting and Repairs, painting homes and performing repair work. Per Ann Salas, his family brought him, as a child, to this country to escape Guatemala’s civil war.
He moved back to Guatemala in his twenties, and gave the American dream a second shot when he was 31, with the woman who became the mother of his two older sons, Ann Salas said. The two older boys are now 12 and 17.
Antony and Ann Salas met in 2020, and started their relationship as friends. “It was a slow progression into dating,” Ann Salas said, given that Antony Salas was separated and had two children.
“I didn’t meet his children for the first nine months that I knew Tony, because he was very protective of them… that’s the kind of dad he is,” she said.
The following year, the couple bought a home in Skokie, and in 2022, welcomed a baby boy. They put down roots, getting to know neighbors and people at their synagogue.
Little food, sickness, despair
Her husband looks at the bright side of things, Ann Salas said.
“I’m positive he did not tell me as bad as it was,” Ann Salas said of Antony Salas’ account of the detention and processing center. “He did say that at times he broke down crying because they just treat you like animals. And he said he understands why some guys commit suicide there.”
At ICE’s facility in Broadview, Antony Salas slept on concrete floors, was given little food, and had no access to private bathrooms, per Ann Salas. It was overcrowded, and he was kept there for three days.
In Missouri, he was not allowed access to his prescription medicine for high blood pressure and encountered side effects when he was given a different brand of the medication, Ann Salas said. She drove there to give him his passport.
At that facility, he caught the flu, but was not given immediate access to the commissary to get medicine, she said.
The Louisiana facility was only slightly better, she said, and he was allowed to be outside 45 minutes a day for the week he was there. He had more access to food and water, but the water was yellow, Ann Salas said.
In August, he turned 49 in a birthday behind bars.
During Antony Salas’ time in the facilities, he and Ann helped other detainees to communicate with their loved ones.
“There were wives that I would call, friends that I would text, to let them know their friends or their family is okay,” Ann Salas said. “But the only reason I could do that is because my husband was focusing on helping others while he was going through his own issue.”
The Salas’ neighbors also wanted to do something. They reached out to the offices of Commissioner Morita and Rep. Schakowsky.
Alex Moore, Schakowsky’s communications director, told Pioneer Press that during Antony Salas’ detainment, the Congresswoman’s office contacted ICE to ask about his whereabouts. ICE did not respond to the Congresswoman, he said.
“Our hands are kind of tied at this point — so we’re still trying to get in touch, and we have been doing inquiries on (the Salas family’s) behalf, but that’s where it stands right now.”
Moore said Schakowsky’s office was unaware that Salas was in Guatemala.
Morita, outside of her elected official role, helped put out the word that the Salas family was doing an estate sale through Sunday in the 5300 block of Suffield Terrace, Skokie, and helped organize a sendoff for the family.
Along with the estate sale, Morita called Skokie’s Soul Good Coffee owner Kristina Perez Thompson to ask what she could do to help. A percentage of sales from Soul Good coffee, 4022 Main St., Skokie, on Monday, Oct. 6 will go to help the Salas family if buyers mention their name.
“The Salas family has come to Soul Good plenty of times,” Perez Thompson said. “I’m heartbroken for my community.”
A sendoff for the family was scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 5 at Sketchbook Brewing, 4901 Main St., Skokie.
