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Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election last November, kids around the country have been scared about what his promise of mass deportations might mean for them and their classmates.

“They come up and say, ‘What’s going to happen, teacher?’” Elma Alvarez, an instructional specialist at an elementary school in Tucson, Arizona, told me.

Now the fear in classrooms has ratcheted up to a new level, thanks to a directive issued last week allowing immigration agents to arrest people at schools and other “sensitive areas” that they’ve avoided in the past. Anxiety ramped up even further last Friday after federal agents who showed up at a Chicago elementary school were initially mistaken for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

They were actually Secret Service agents, but the episode has parents in the city feeling frightened, with one mom, who has legal status but whose children do not, telling the Washington Post over the weekend that she didn’t want her son going back to school until things had calmed down.

The incident “reflects the fear and anxiety that is present in our city right now,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said in a letter to parents.

That fear and anxiety have been echoed around the country, with parents and students afraid to leave their homes, and educators worried about how the threat of ICE raids could affect a generation of kids already reeling from school shootings, the Covid-19 pandemic, wildfires, and other disasters.

“They’ve already been through so much,” Alvarez said. “School is a place where everybody, every single person that steps on campus, should feel safe.”

The fear of ICE in classrooms

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