Chicago day care teacher released from ICE detention

Diana Santillana Galeano has been released from migration detention.

Diana Santillana Galeano, the day attraction teacher detained by ICE officers past week, has been released from migration detention, her lawyers said.

"We are thrilled that Ms. Santillana was released, and has been capable to instrumentality location to Chicago wherever she belongs," said attorneys Charlie Wysong and Naiara Testai successful a statement. "We volition proceed to prosecute her migration claims to enactment successful the United States. We are grateful to her assemblage for the outpouring of enactment implicit these hard days, and inquire that her privateness beryllium respected portion she rests and recovers from this ordeal."

Her attorneys accidental she volition beryllium reunited with parents of the Rayito de Sol assemblage connected Friday.

Two parents clasp each different extracurricular of the Rayito De Sol Spanish Immersion Daycare and Pre-School, wherever national agents conducted an migration raid that ended successful a teacher being detained, successful Chicago, Illinois, Nov. 5, 2025.

Jim Vondruska/Reuters

"I americium truthful grateful to everyone who has advocated connected my behalf, and connected behalf of the countless others who person experienced akin trauma implicit caller months successful the Chicago area," said Santillana Galeano successful a statement. "I emotion our assemblage and the children I teach, and I can't hold to spot them again."

Local officials said Santillana Galeano was arrested astatine Rayito de Sol's Spanish-language immersion time attraction with 1 claiming she was "abducted successful beforehand of her students." The Department of Homeland Security maintained that she fled into the time attraction aft an attempted postulation halt and lied astir her identity. They besides accused her of entering the state illegally successful 2023 and claimed she "reportedly" paid a smuggler to bring her children to the United States recently.

A national justice past week temporarily barred the Trump medication from removing Santillana Galeano from the U.S. and transferring her to immoderate national jurisdiction extracurricular of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, tribunal documents show. 

Erin Horetski, a genitor of 1 of the children Santillana Galeano teaches astatine the time care, tells ABC News she "burst into tears" erstwhile she heard the quality of her release. She said "Ms. Diana's" connection says a batch astir the benignant of idiosyncratic she is.

"She's reasoning archetypal astir the kids, astir each of us, adjacent aft everything she has been through. It's moments similar this erstwhile you're reminded that radical similar Diana are the bosom of this community, and adjacent successful the darkest circumstances, her instinct is to nonstop emotion outward," Horetski told ABC News.

Horetski launched a GoFundMe run for Santillana Galeano that has raised astir $160,000.

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