For weeks, parents and teachers throughout Minnesota have been reluctant to share specifics about the steps they’re taking to protect their school communities. But the killing of an ICU nurse by federal agents over the weekend — the second shooting captured and shared worldwide on cellphone cameras — finally brought their reality to the attention of the outside world, speakers told reporters.

A crying mom described driving her kid’s terrified classmates to school in the Minneapolis neighborhood where agents killed another mother, Renee Good, three weeks ago. A school board member who publicly criticized ICE for detaining a preschooler said she woke up to find an ICE caravan idling outside her home. A superintendent detailed how she arranges transportation for at-risk school staffers’ — and then joins her school security workers on patrol. 

The superintendent, Fridley Public Schools’ Brenda Lewis, said her suburban district has been “targeted”: “We need helpers. We need leaders, advocates and people of influence to step in and help end this.”

Educators narrated the fatigue of working a full day and then spending hours volunteering, delivering food and other essentials to families in hiding — only to find themselves tailed by caravans of heavily armed federal agents.  

An American government teacher-turned-state lawmaker shouted as he described walking below an FDR quote chiseled into stone in the hall leading to the state Senate chambers: “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.”  

As the speakers took turns, a tiny pink origami rabbit sat on the rim of the podium. To one side was a poster of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained coming home from preschool Jan. 20. Conejo means rabbit. In a now-iconic photo of a federal agent grabbing Liam by his Spider-Man backpack, the boy is wearing a homemade knit bunny hat. 

As she approached the podium, a woman identified only as Elizabeth broke down. “I practiced this and practiced,” she said, crying, before saying that as she feeds her kids breakfast, she keeps an eye trained on a closed group chat in her neighborhood, where Good was killed three weeks ago.    

If the group says it’s okay to leave, she loads her kid in the car and then picks up classmates whose parents can’t leave home. At school, they’re greeted by people trying their best to make the citizen safety brigade that flanks the walkway from the street to the school entrance look like the fun squad: “Our neighbors with the amazing frog hats and the giant smiles. The dog walkers who have changed their routines to include the school. And the retired teachers — who cannot stop caring for our kids.”

Still, sometimes that’s not enough to reassure the most frightened pupils. “That is when my small child walks up and says hello, and offers to walk them into school,” she said. 

The ride home? “I try to find a playlist and I imagine the parent who hasn’t left their home in seven or eight weeks, trusting me, a stranger, with their kids, who can barely communicate with them, making sure their kid gets home and walked to their door,” she continued. “All of this is racing through my mind as I am checking my mirrors for safety and still singing along to K Pop Demon Hunters. 

“While I love that I have these experiences, it is their parents who should be in the car, singing along and hearing the stories of the day.”     

Mary Granlund is a parent and school board chair in Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Liam is a student. She said she watched as agents pulled him from the car bringing him home and steered him up the steps to his house, where they told him to knock on the door to see whether adults would come out. 

Liam and his father were taken and flown to a detention center in Texas, where a judge Tuesday ordered ICE not to deport them. Only one of the three other children detained the same day has been allowed to come home, Granlund said.  

After Granlund publicly denounced the children’s detentions, she woke up to multiple vehicles parked outside her house, with men in tactical gear inside. She called the local police, who came and stayed — perhaps mindful that in June, not far away, a political extremist assassinated a lawmaker and her husband and nearly killed two others. “I don’t need to remind anybody in this room or watching this the fear that elected officials have related to unmarked vehicles outside your home with people wearing tactical gear,” she said. 

Though the Trump administration earlier this week signaled a willingness to , federal agents were visible in the Capitol area, and legal observers and throughout the metro area reported no slowdown in and . 

Indeed, Granlund said the hours before the press conference were as chaotic as they have been for weeks: “Today, people across Columbia Heights woke up to cars still running, doors open, empty, left in the street” — a common occurrence when agents pull someone from their vehicle and leave it, abandoned. 

Peg Nelson, a teacher in Granlund’s district for 33 years, said educators try to keep the school day as normal as possible. “But students and families look to their teachers for answers,” she said. “Children ask, ‘Can they take us?’ And we don’t know what to tell them…. We are doing everything we can. We will but we were not trained for this.”

Democratic State Sen. Steve Swazinski, who represents several western Minneapolis suburbs, taught American government for 33 years. “I don’t know how I would be teaching this right now,” he said. “I just don’t know how I would teach both sides to the story.”

Fridley’s Lewis said speaking out is particularly hard for educators, whose training and ethics are to empower students to take in a range of information and draw their own conclusions. “This is not abstract for me or for district leadership,” she said. “None of this is partisan. This is about children, predominantly children of color, being treated as less than human. And about the dehumanization of those who stand with them.”

Founding president of the National Parents Union, Keri Rodrigues traveled from Massachusetts to St. Paul to be present. “I’ve had so many conversations with people on the phone and on Zoom in the last few weeks who felt like they weren’t being heard, who felt like their experiences needed to get out there,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “Here’s a list of 10 things that are disrupted, and we can’t get anyone to pay attention.”   

She said her next stop is Washington, D.C., where she said she plans to recount the stories she heard to members of Congress.

Near the end of the press conference, a reporter asked about the paper bunny. Liam’s teachers stepped forward to answer. There is a Japanese tradition in which folding 1,000 origami cranes can grant a wish or speed recovery.

For Liam, the teachers have already started on 1,000 pink rabbits.

That was one local district administrator’s swift reply when asked what she wants people to know about educating kids in the Twin Cities right now.   

Two weeks after federal agents killed Minneapolis mother Renee Good, virtually every aspect of schooling throughout the region is being shaken by the presence of some 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers. 

“We’re being impacted on a basis that well outpaces targeted immigration enforcement,” says Heather Anderson, a Minneapolis Public Schools parent who runs a nonprofit education-related program for students of color. “It’s pervasive. Everybody is being affected. Nobody can go to work. Nobody can use the school bus. …. I literally just dropped a load of groceries off to a family who can’t leave their house.” 

At one of Anderson’s neighborhood schools, an estimated two-thirds of students are enrolled in distance learning, she says, but many families lack wifi or hotspots. The number of students participating in her in-person program has dropped by half.    

“The kids who did come, several gave reports that ICE had been in their apartment complex, in their buildings, on their streetcorners,” she says. “We worked really hard at just creating a bubble of joy for them.”

Educator Kara Cisco lives a couple of blocks from where Good was killed. “My daughters are terrified even though they don’t fit a category that would fall under those that are targeted,” she says. “They’re both carrying their own passports. That’s scary.”

On the first day of distance learning, attendance in one of her daughter’s classes dropped from 25 students to nine, even though most are citizens. “It’s the general sense of fear,” says Cisco. “I’ve got one daughter that’s texting me pretty much every hour on the hour to notify me of the ICE presence around school.”

Federal agents outnumber the officers employed by the metropolitan area’s 10 largest police departments combined. They are roaming neighborhoods — often in convoys of unmarked SUVs — detaining U.S. citizens and legal residents along with people whose status is unknown. have reported ICE , in at least one instance at gunpoint.     

St. Paul Public Schools reported that two vans were stopped by ICE last week. Students and parents in urban and suburban school systems have been detained while waiting for school buses or public transit. A Hiawatha Collegiate High School senior was at a Minneapolis bus stop Jan. 15. A parent waiting with multiple Robbinsdale Area Public Schools students the day before.

The Department of Homeland Security claims to have detained 3,000 people so far. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the agents to stop using pepper spray and non-lethal munitions and detaining protesters and observers unless they obstruct the officers or there is reason to believe a crime has been committed. The U.S. Department of Justice this week appealed the order, even as residents continue to report observer detentions.     

Several labor unions — including educator unions in St. Paul and Minneapolis — have called for a general strike Jan. 23, and some students have said they plan to join what’s being described as an economic protest. St. Paul schools will be in session. In Minneapolis and many Twin Cities charter schools, the strike will coincide with a long-scheduled teacher record-keeping day. 

Asked at a what it feels like to attend classes now, a teen in a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of Roosevelt High School — where ICE agents pepper-sprayed and tackled parents, educators and students the day Good was killed — said it was hard seeing how many kids were not there. 

“When I came to school and I found lots of friends and classmates missing, it was scary,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine what they were going through.” 

The chaos has made it hard for schools to create and communicate contingency plans. The St. Paul district closed Jan. 20 and 21 to allow educators to organize distance learning options. Parents and teachers in other districts, however, are reporting school-by-school ad hoc arrangements.   

A parent at a high-poverty Minneapolis school in a neighborhood where an ICE agent last week says her child’s in-person classes are overstuffed as some teachers are temporarily reassigned to teach groups of kids online. Like many parents and educators, she asked not to be named for fear that her child’s school would be targeted. 

Adding to the strain, it’s unclear whether kids who are technically enrolled in remote instruction are actually online. Numerous students at her child’s school are simply no longer attending any classes because a parent or sibling has been detained, the parent says. 

“It’s happening at such breathtaking speed,” she says. “What are you even going to do?”   

forced the small, social-justice themed charter school attended by Good’s 6-year-old to move entirely online, according to Sahan Journal, a Minnesota news outlet focused on immigrants and people of color. Good had been appointed to the Southside Family Charter School’s board in August, according to the news site. 

Residents not at risk of deportation are waiting outside schools and at bus stops before and after classes, but parents and advocates say many families are still too fearful to leave their homes.  

“Parents don’t even want rides,” says one St. Paul education advocacy group leader who did not want their name used because they are at risk of detention. “They’re like, ‘I’m not going nowhere.’ … With COVID, we feared the disease itself, but it still wasn’t like if you walked outside your door there might be a masked man that jumps out at you.”

“This is no longer about immigration enforcement,” says Josh Crosson, executive director of the advocacy group EdAllies. “It feels like we’re all in a collective trauma.”

Twin Cities schools are still grappling with the impact of the pandemic and of unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, he adds. “Students are witnessing their classmates and friends being abducted or removed from their school communities. The direct and indirect trauma is resulting in increased behavioral incidents with students, withdrawal and disengagement, difficulty concentrating.”  

Like many other parents and teachers, Anderson is frustrated that inequities in distance learning and community support persist even after COVID. “Schools with lots of resources are mobilizing quickly, and schools without resources have nothing,” she says. “We really aren’t in distance learning. We are really just not having kids in school if they’re poor.”  

Cisco echoed this, noting that a big difference from pandemic remote instruction is the lack of an official coordinated response.     

“A great deal of federal funding helped pay for things during COVID such as hotspots,” says Cisco. “It’s never been a foregone conclusion that every family has access to the internet — particularly those that are in sanctuary settings. … It’s absurd to expect a scholar to learn under these circumstances.”

Teachers, she adds, spend a lot of time building community and a sense of psychological safety, especially with students who are homeless or face other kinds of instability: “Creating the conditions for real learning to take place, that is completely lost when half your class is suddenly gone.”  

In a , Rochester Superintendent Kent Pekel said people of color and immigrants in his community — including citizens and district staff — are fearful of leaving their homes.

“I have no doubt that how each of us responds to this present moment will have a powerful impact on how our students see themselves and our society in the years ahead,” he said.

As horrific as the violence has been, Anderson says, she also is proud that young people are watching the community organize. “My kids have lived with this through many iterations,” she says. They know this is what their parents are going to do when their neighbors need us. 

“They have gotten to see us love with our feet and our hands.”  

Minneapolis Public Schools are shut down for the remainder of the week after armed Border Patrol agents clashed with students and staff at a local high school Wednesday, just hours after an immigration officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car.

The closure of an entire city school district is an unprecedented response to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration dragnet, one that has disrupted schools and sparked fear in students, families and educators across the country. The district announced to staff Thursday evening it will offer temporary online learning starting next week and continuing through Feb. 12.

Gov. Tim Walz, a former schoolteacher, said he thought Minneapolis Public Schools made “absolutely what was the right decision” to close and condemned federal agents’ presence at Roosevelt High School and other campuses. 

“I can’t say this strongly enough as a governor, as a parent, as a teacher, to our elected representatives, Democrats and Republicans, I beg you, I implore you to tell them to stay out of our schools,” Walz said at a press conference Thursday. “Tragedy will be magnified a hundredfold if this fight moves into the hallways of our public schools, amongst our youth. They are watching us, they are watching us now how we respond.” 

Josie Bures, 17 and a senior at Roosevelt, attended a protest at ICE headquarters for three hours early Thursday morning and planned to stop by another in the late evening. She’s not worried about herself, she said, but about the immigrants in her community.

“Those are our neighbors, our friends, my classmates and our teachers,” Bures said. “It’s just a very weird feeling to watch your teacher be tackled to the ground by ICE agents.”

The White House flooded Minneapolis this week , just days before Renee Nicole Good, 37, a writer who had just dropped off encountered a group of them on a snowy street and was shot in the head when she attempted to drive away.

The Department of Homeland Security and local witnesses and video have offered starkly different accounts of the actions preceding Good’s death and those at Roosevelt High School, where local news reports say students and staff .

A DHS spokesperson denied the use of tear gas and told �鶹��Ʒ on Thursday that agents were conducting immigration enforcement in the area when a U.S. citizen rammed his car into a government vehicle. While the man was being removed, DHS contended, “an individual who identified himself as a teacher proceeded to assault a border patrol agent.” 

A crowd gathered and “rioters” threw objects and paint at the officers and their vehicles, DHS said, adding, “agents would not have been near this location if not for the dangerous actions” of the driver. 

The district issued a statement Thursday saying, “Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) is aware of an incident that happened after school yesterday outside of Roosevelt High School. This incident involved federal law enforcement agents and is currently under investigation. We are working with our partners including the City of Minneapolis and others to support the individuals directly impacted.”

The statement went on to note its commitment “to maintaining a safe and welcoming learning environment for all of our students.” Recent events have deeply undermined that effort, parents and students told �鶹��Ʒ. 

Shawna Hedlund, whose son is a freshman at Roosevelt, said he left campus just before federal agents arrived, but was already “stricken by what he had heard about the shooting.”

That feeling worsened when her son and other students she spoke with learned that ICE then showed up at their school and chaos broke out.

“They went from dismayed to shocked,” she said.

Hedlund, who works in student health, said she understands the necessity for the school closure but laments that children will be by themselves.

“We learned during the pandemic that isolation is hard on our kids’ mental health,” she said. “I don’t like thinking about all of the kids who are feeling alone today. And at the same time, it was not safe.”

Bures, the Roosevelt senior, said she’s not sure if she’ll be ready to pay attention in class when school resumes Monday, but there is no alternative.

“No one knows how long this will last or how persistent ICE will be,” she said. “My friend’s mom works at a St. Paul school. ICE comes there every day in the morning and when school lets out in the afternoon. As soon as school starts up, will ICE be there again?”

Muslim faith leader Abdulahi Farah said parents were already afraid to drop off and pick up their children at school. 

“The parents of high schoolers are the most scared,” Farah said. “The seniors and juniors, they are tall: They look like grown people — and they are driving. I have had a lot of moms share with me how they took away their kids’ car keys. Young people want to go play basketball, but parents are trying to make sure these young boys and girls are safe.”

Parents of older kids, fear, too, they could unintentionally escalate interaction with federal agents, he said. 

“Young people don’t use the best judgment,” Farah said. “Teenagers might run away from ICE agents — and ICE agents might shoot them.” 

Good was killed while driving away from agents who had come up to her vehicle, including one who tried to yank her driver’s side door open, according from the scene. DHS maintains that Good tried to run down one of their agents, who defended himself.

Numerous Twin Cities district and charter schools told families Wednesday that they should consider keeping their children home, according to a suburban Minneapolis school board member who asked not to be identified because she has loved ones at risk of deportation.

She said more than a third of district students were absent Wednesday, and that large numbers are not expected to return — particularly in neighborhoods targeted by federal agents.    

Like Roosevelt High School, the schools where ICE and the Border Patrol have been spotted have dual-language programs, heavy concentrations of Latino students and immigrant staff. Many are communicating with families directly instead of posting logistics on social networks, parents and administrators said. 

Several charter schools catering to immigrant populations are also closed. Located about a mile from Good’s shooting, El Colegio High School said it will notify families when it reopens. The three-school Hiawatha Academies network is also shuttered. 

Area superintendents were meeting Thursday to discuss the complicated state laws that govern absences. Because Minnesota reimburses schools for daily attendance, it has a law requiring them to disenroll students who aren’t present for 15 or more days. Administrators are likely to ask for a temporary exception. 

In Minneapolis, most high schoolers use public transit at district expense. Before it closed, Hiawatha began providing dedicated yellow buses for any student afraid to ride the public buses because ICE agents might board them. 

St. Paul Public Schools remains open but has instructed students to stay on school buses if they feel unsafe getting off. Drivers have been told how to make alternate arrangements to drive students home, the district said.  

A multilingual learner teacher in a southern Minneapolis suburb said her school, which serves a large portion of Spanish-speaking students, was in session Thursday but the mood was somber. She asked not to be identified to avoid drawing ICE’s attention.

In addition to the violence that unfolded Wednesday, one student’s father was detained Tuesday, she said.

“I started my class with quiet meditation and affirmations such as, ‘I belong here. I’m strong even when things feel scary. My family’s story matters. I’m allowed to feel happy even during hard times. I can focus on what I can control,’” she said.  

Anxiety is high, too, for parents of very young children whose local day care centers have come under intense scrutiny in the wake of recent allegations of fraud. The Trump administration cited those charges among its reasons for sending federal agents into Minneapolis with such force. 

“We have grown men showing up there with cameras,” Farah said, referring to social media influencers attracted by . “So some of the parents are not taking the kids to day care.”

And, he said, bullying is on the rise in schools, especially against the Somali community, another target of the president. Many of its members fled their homeland to escape government brutality, he said. 

“They have seen things like this before. … Things you thought would never happen here are happening here.” he said. “It has been overwhelming.”

Earlier this week, organizing on private channels, parents arranged patrols during dismissal times outside schools with programs catering to immigrants. Individual school parent groups also dropped off groceries and other supplies at students’ homes and solicited donations for families where adults or teens have been unable to work.

Within a couple of hours of Good’s death, the education community swung into action. Mattie Weiss, a former policy advocate at Educators for Excellence, created a GoFundMe for Good’s loved ones that as of Thursday night had collected $1.2 million from 31,100 donors, far surpassing its $50,000 goal.

Adam Strom, co-founder and executive director of Re-Imagining Migration, said that what happened in Minneapolis this week is being felt nationwide. 

“This is the result of policies transforming schools into sites of fear,” he said. “As horrible as that scene was, the impact ripples far beyond Minneapolis. Families across the country, after witnessing this, are sure that this could happen here, too. The question we all must face is what we’re going to do to keep our students safe.” 

The resistance — born online through group chats and spreadsheets — has culminated in a highly coordinated effort to expose federal immigration agents and ensure vulnerable students safe passage to and from school, among other efforts. 

Marissa Bejarano, a middle and high school teacher in southeast Louisiana, is a part of this movement, attending word-of-mouth meetings — participants are asked not to post them on social media — to learn how best to protect those most impacted by Trump’s dragnet. 

The administration began its promised crackdown in New Orleans last Wednesday in operation “.” 

“For me, it feels like my nervous system is part of a collective,” Bejarano told �鶹��Ʒ. “We are connected by fear, uncertainty and the grief of not being able to rely on the future. But going to a community meeting really pulled me out of my sadness. I walked in overwhelmed but left feeling supported by a group of strangers that want to protect our immigrant community. It’s so important that no one isolates.”

Bejarano, who is Mexican-American, said she spoke to a mother Thursday who had gone into hiding. The teacher was able to offer her and her children assistance and reassurance.

“She was so relieved to talk to me, to have someone listen,” she said. “We were able to get her groceries, discuss a plan for her kids and now she has a local contact that she can reach out to when necessary.”

Resistance efforts in other cities have included parents in Washington, D.C., forming “walking school buses” and teachers in spending their mornings scouring their community for immigration agents so they can send out a warning. In Chicago, where the confrontations have , started meal trains, ride-share programs and legal defense funds.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, denied DHS enforcement has endangered students and families, maintaining instead that organized opposition has imperiled law enforcement.

“Let me be extremely clear for all media: We are NOT targeting schools,” she said in an email Friday morning. “This assertion is an abject lie. The media is sadly attempting to create a climate of fear and smear law enforcement. These smears are contributing to our ICE law enforcement officers facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them.”

But many children and their families have been detained on or near school grounds since the department, through its Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection arms, began a mass deportation campaign in late spring.

Cristal Medina, 17 and who attends Charlotte’s East Mecklenburg High School, knows the risks better than anyone. Her father, Yasser Ricardo Gomez Flores, born in Nicaragua, was detained in October after delivering her to school. 

He now sits in a Georgia detention center awaiting possible deportation.

“He was detained on Oct. 21, right after dropping me off,” said Medina, who is in the 11th grade. “A group of cars surrounded him and stopped him as he was preparing to cross the bridge near East Meck. He left his van and my mom picked it up soon after.” 

Medina was one of hundreds of students who walked out of class Nov. 18, just a few days after immigration enforcement agents and clashing with demonstrators. 

“My father is not a criminal,” Medina told her classmates at an on-campus rally. “He is a responsible and hardworking man who has dedicated himself to his company, showing up every day and contributing to this country. He paid his taxes. He followed the rules. He built a life here with dignity and honesty. All he ever asked for was a chance — a chance to make his dream real: to see me walk across the graduation stage, and to watch me grow into the professional I aspire to become. That dream should not be denied.”

Amiin Harun, an immigration attorney who represents many Somalis in Minneapolis, said his phone has been ringing nonstop since Trump’s recent rants against his community, with the president calling its members

“It is emanating from the highest office in the land,” Harun told �鶹��Ʒ. “The most powerful man in the world is attacking one of the smallest communities in this country. It’s insane.”  

Federal agents flooded the Twin Cities last week: following the administration’s order to target undocumented Somalis. 

One American-born woman of Somali descent was reportedly in the ongoing sweep. 

Harun notes local Somalis are asking members of the Hispanic community — until now, — how to defend themselves, strategizing inside mosques, churches, community centers, on Zoom, Whatsapp and other online forums.   

Harun, who also chairs the board of the has already advised staff on what to do if ICE seeks to enter its grounds: “Lock the door, and tell them no.”

In Charlotte, Juan Diego “J.D.” Mazuera Arias, a formerly undocumented resident himself, is now trained to spot and verify the presence of federal immigration agents before alerting others online.

He said that while the Customs and Border Patrol officers leading operation “” might have come to spark fear, they ignited something else.

“We made a web of our own,” Arias told �鶹��Ʒ. “One that protected us and that was woven by love, unity, community and laughter. In spite of fear, despair, anxiety and confusion, we always find a way to show the world who we are.”

Anti-ICE efforts have extended well beyond the schoolhouse. Protesters raid in Chinatown in late November, hurling sidewalk planters into the street to block agents’ path. And Long Islanders gathered in bitter temperatures this past weekend to demand Suffolk County , which has been training agents at a gun range there for decades — and is now heavily patrolling its streets. 

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker new rules restricting immigration enforcement outside states courthouses and making it easier for residents to sue immigration agents for alleged civil rights violations. The Democratic governor said the measures would “

While pushback against the federal government’s mass deportation campaign has also sometimes , a steady undercurrent of dread is prompting many parents to keep their children at home and to avoid high-risk drop-off and pick-up times.

Student absences in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District after agents arrived. 

Senior Zara Taty started to organize her classmates on the same day the enforcement operation began, creating a Group Meet chat with 25 people that grew to nearly 300 in a matter of days. Students used the forum to support immigrant families any way they could, including through the walkout where they chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”

“I know right now we are frustrated, mad, sad, worried, scared and confused,” Taty told rally attendees. “I think it is important to remember that during these difficult times the most important thing to do is to stick together, to respect one another, to show empathy and show love.”

Across the country in Los Angeles, school children are walking to campus in groups and hoping for strength in numbers. Los Angeles Unified School District families are also organizing food drives to feed their immigrant neighbors who can no longer work because of fear of deportation, an LAUSD teacher told �鶹��Ʒ. The educator, who said ICE was outside her school in mid-October, asked not to be identified because of her own immigration status. 

She said teachers have been trained in helping parents create family preparedness plans in case they are detained or deported. She’s also pushing the district, which has pledged to block ICE enforcement action, to take an even more proactive role in keeping kids safe, perhaps by having schools go into lockdown when immigration agents are nearby.

Aggressive enforcement actions have caused students’ grades to plummet — and it’s not just immigrant kids, she said, but the entire student body.

“Students are exhausted,” she said. “Their hearts, their minds, their souls are exhausted. And our parents are scared that they’re not going to see their kids again. It’s honestly horrific, and it’s insane because it’s been happening for so long.”

Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, is director of the , a coalition of more than 150 educators, researchers and advocates from 35 states. 

She said she’s pleased to see how organized the resistance movement has become, including in California, where parents are, for example, driving half their kids’ soccer team to tournaments because others “don’t feel safe leaving their home and they don’t want their child not to have the opportunity to engage in extracurriculars.”

But no matter how much support communities show, she said, children are living through a harrowing era. 

“This is going to be a moment that many kids remember for their lifetimes,” she said.