John,
Public schools are meant to be places where children feel safe enough to learn, concentrate, and grow. ICE enforcement near schools shatters that foundation.
For children, the fear is deeply personal and constant: the terror that a parent might not come home, that a caregiver could disappear after dropping them off or before picking them up. That fear follows them into the classroom and stays there.
Chronic stress of this kind directly undermines memory formation, attention, and concentration, disrupting the brain systems children rely on to regulate strong emotions. Instead of taking in and integrating new information, children in survival mode have to scan for danger. Especially for young children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing, prolonged fear can close off curiosity, stunt academic growth, and blunt the desire to learn.
When children witness classmates, family members, or neighbors being apprehended in sudden, frightening ways, they internalize a devastating lesson: nowhere is safe. When anxiety and trauma become chronic, the damage extends beyond the classroom, producing both immediate and long-term harm to mental and physical health. Fear overwhelms the cognitive systems learning depends on.
In Minnesota, ICE activity near public schools on the same day Renee Good was killed sent shockwaves through entire communities. Schools canceled full days of classes, and families kept children home, unwilling to risk separation. Teachers were left trying to manage fear and distress instead of teaching.
Tell your state Attorney General to take legal action, issue binding guidance, and make it clear that schools and their surrounding areas are off limits to ICE enforcement now.
A recent University of California, Riverside report confirms that even the threat of separation can generate profound emotional harm for children of immigrant families, including anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems. The persistent fear that a parent or sibling could vanish at any moment leads to absenteeism, academic disengagement, and emotional shutdown.
Across the country, immigration enforcement has crept closer to places meant for children. ICE agents have detained parents and even teachers near school grounds and operated in the vicinity of daycares. The consequences are immediate and visible: students withdraw emotionally, attendance collapses, and entire families vanish from school communities overnight.
As trust erodes, more parents are choosing to keep their children home altogether, no longer confident that schools are safe spaces. This fear has been fueled by the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to roll back the long-standing “sensitive locations” policy that once discouraged enforcement in schools, churches, and hospitals.
Children cannot focus, learn, or thrive without a basic sense of security -- and without knowing that when the school day ends, their parents will still be there to take them home.
Tell your state Attorney General to keep ICE out of public schools and protect all students now.
Thank you for standing up for children’s learning, well-being, and dignity.
– DFA AF Team
