“There is war,” Muhammed from Yemen wrote to me. “Everything is chaotic. Schools are closed. People have no food to eat. Everyone is scared. It’s very dangerous. Little kids have guns and other weapons.”

“The politics in Bangladesh is corrupt,” wrote Tamjid. “Schools are always closed because of strikes. Many students are afraid to go to school.”

“We came here because my father was threatened and my family was afraid they would hurt us,” Miguel of Colombia wrote.

Such were the 81 cards — hand-made, hand-written and colorfully illustrated in crayon — carrying personal messages to me from immigrant children now living in the U.S.

Six years ago, I gave a talk in front of some 150 students, teachers and parents at the Academy for New Americans, a public middle school for grades six through eight in New York City. The school educates recently arrived immigrant children who enroll knowing little or no English but who then graduate speaking English fluently. Afterward, one of the students handed me a large manila envelope containing the 81 cards.

The other day, provoked by the new deportation policy rolling out so thunderously nationwide, I........

© The Hill