About 40 protestors, many of them children, marched through the Loop last week to protest U.S. immigration policy.

It happened once at school, in front of the entire class, when a teacher asked 8-year-old Anthony Figueroa where his dad lived.

Another time, it was triggered as Anthony watched a movie – “The Pursuit of Happyness,” which chronicles the story of a single father struggling to support his young son.

The Albany Park third-grader, usually an outgoing boy with an easy smile, began to cry.

Anthony began to go through some emotional changes during the fall of 2007, said his mother, 28-year-old Erika Herrera. That’s when Figueroa’s father, who had been working in the United States illegally, was deported to his native Mexico.

“Anthony was close with his father,” Herrera said. “He misses him so much. And it’s hard for me because I have to play this role of [both] mom and dad.”

His father’s deportation makes him both sad and angry, Anthony said.

“ICE took away my family,” he explained, using the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency charged with enforcing immigration law. “ICE took away my dad.”

On March 30, the boy and his mother marched through the Loop with about 40 other people, roughly half of them children, to protest federal immigration laws, which allow for the deportation of illegal immigrants who may have family ties to the United States.

The protest was a small precursor to the annual May Day march that took place the next day, which drew about 2,000 people. But it represents a larger movement within the immigration reform community that’s aimed at emphasizing how deportation hurts families, said Amalia Pallares, a University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist who co-edited a forthcoming book on immigration marches.

May Day protests have their roots in the labor movement of the late 1800s. Because many workers were also migrants, immigrant- and workers-rights activists often found common ground.

That association became more official on May 1, 2006, when about 300,000 marchers descended upon downtown Chicago – not to celebrate workers’ rights, but to protest U.S. immigration policy.

Because of the relationship between labor and immigration, Pallares said many Americans have long thought of immigrants as lone-wolf laborers, separated from their families as they search for work abroad.

But there’s now an effort to show that migrant workers are “full human beings, that we’re families, that we’re siblings, that we’re parents,” she said.

An estimated 5.5 million children living in the U.S. last year had parents who were here illegally, according to an analysis released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center. Of those, 4 million were American citizens.

Because accurate statistics on illegal immigration are inherently elusive, it’s difficult to know how many children are in Anthony’s situation – American citizens who have lost a relative to deportation.

At last week’s march, about half of the protesters were children, many of whom have had a family member removed from the country.

They had been organized by the Rev. Jose Landaverde, an outspoken immigrant-rights leader from Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Catholic Mission in Little Village.

Donning a clerical collar and shouting into a bullhorn, Landaverde during last week’s march led children in a chant of “No more ICE!” as they walked the six blocks from Grant Park to the federal building at 101 W. Congress, where the agency has offices.

“The main goal is to show them that, when they’re upset about something, they can protest or march – that something can be done,” said Deacon Jose Herrera, a spokesman for the Mission.

Although Pallares said some in the immigration-rights community think it’s exploitative to involve children in the immigration debate, she said it’s a proven method for eliciting compassion from those who have the power to change immigration policy.

Gail Montenegro, a representative for ICE, said in a statement that her agency “has an obligation to enforce the laws of our country as they are written,” adding that “ICE welcomes comprehensive immigration reform.”

The evening rush hour was winding down when the children finally reached the intersection of Clark and Congress last Thursday. In the darkened lobby of the federal building where ICE has a temporary detention facility, a custodian began waxing the tile floor.

Across the street, where the protesters held a brief rally, Anthony Figueroa spoke softly into a bullhorn.

“We’re here to remind the president to stop the ICE from taking our parents,” he said, his voice echoing against the buildings. “They took my daddy.”