Shortly after President Donald Trump's inauguration, rumors of ICE agents in Massachusetts schools led students to stay home. Mother Jones illustration; LM Otero/AP

When Sam, a third-grade teacher in the greater Boston area, walked into her classroom January 30, about a third of her students were absent. “The sun was beating down so hard and it was reflecting off the desks in the room, and the desks were empty,” Sam remembers. “And I was like—oh my god. This is so sad. I don’t know why it touched me like that: the sun beaming on the tables that were empty.”

Sam’s school district in Framingham, Massachusetts, is diverse: English learners make up 37 percent of the student population. But it wasn’t a one-off. Educators and school officials in other metro Boston districts reported similar noticeable drops in attendance, too, as students fear President Donald Trump’s increased push to mass deport millions. (The teachers asked that their names be withheld for fear of attracting unwanted attention to their schools.)

“The thing I kept getting is: ‘What if I go home today and my parents are already gone?’” one teacher said.

In January, one middle school science teacher told Mother Jones, there were days when “half my students were gone…they all agreed to stay home.” Many of her students—including Brazilian, Haitian, and Guatemalan children—live with undocumented family members. When messages started circulating on WhatsApp warning that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was patrolling the area the last week of January, many became afraid to leave their homes.

Their anxiety was justified. Almost immediately upon taking office, the Trump administration rescinded a previous policy that limited ICE arrests in or around so-called “sensitive” locations: places of worship, hospitals, and schools. To keep with campaign promises, the White House began advertising its deportation efforts and sending a message to all undocumented immigrants that nowhere is safe.

“The thing I kept getting is: ‘What if I go home today and my parents are already gone?’” the science teacher said. “‘I don’t want to come to school because I don’t want them to be taken while I’m not home.’” The topic of ICE, one middle school teacher said in early February, has come up “every single period I’ve taught.” Students want to know what will happen if ICE comes to school—and the teacher isn’t sure what to tell them.

“Some students asked, ‘Are we going to practice, like an [active shooter] drill, for when ICE comes?’” she said. There’s no protocol for that, but the teacher tries to reassure them that she’ll do what she can to make her classroom safe.

In one district, news of ICE activity in the local grocery store coincided with 1,031 of the district’s 6,137 students staying home.

The Trump administration’s assault on public education has been thorough: from proposing to dismantle the federal Department of Education and redirecting federal funds to private schools to threatening teachers who fail to align with the president’s

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