For years teachers and students have always had a lot to worry about. Some of the worries were fairly low-stakes like everything from state testing to underfunded classrooms. Others, like school shooters, have become a very high-stakes and real worry in classrooms across the country. Now, however, we have a brand new worry. Something else that is every bit as high stakes and fear-inducing as the threat of a school shooter, and that thing is our own our government and their newly “revamped” immigration enforcement department known as ICE.

A huge recruitment drive promising large bonuses, minimal training and much lower standards has attracted thousands of people to the position. And if you’re wondering if lower-standards and less training makes agents worse at their jobs, you would be 100% correct! 

Chaos, sadly, has been the result of all of this. Everyone at this point has seen the horrific footage of what happened in Minnesota with the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but that is sadly just one chunk of this proverbial ICE-berg. Schools have now become places where immigration enforcement activity nearby has caused widespread fear. Multiple districts and families report increased ICE presence circling or near schools and bus stops, contributing to anxiety in their communities.

The rules that ICE agents have followed for years are being broken, and when they aren’t being broken they’re being re-written to give these masked man carte blanche to seemingly do whatever they want, wherever they want. Up until last year ICE was not allowed to conduct business in what was deemed “sensitive” locations like churches, schools and hospitals. That rule has now been eradicated, as quickly and brutally as these agents have swooped in to rip families apart. So ICE agents are now allowed on school property, and while one of these gunslinging agents haven’t pulled a trigger on school grounds yet, does anyone believe it’s not bound to happen at some point?

This new world we’re living in, is affecting schools in more ways than just making teachers and students more anxious. School districts with large populations of foreign-born residents have seen dramatic increases in student absences because parents are afraid of being “detained” while taking their children to school or worse yet; their children will get taken and sent who knows where without them.

So what can teachers do?

So what can we as teachers do about all of this? Well surprisingly more than you would think. For instance, while ICE does now have the right to wander onto school property, they are not allowed in your classroom without a federal search warrant, or with permission from school officials. So we can at least rest easy knowing that for now we have the right to keep our classroom doors locked and not open them to just anyone with a mask dressed in Army-Navy cosplay. 

Of course, even that right is being tested as ICE sympathizers have wormed their way onto various school boards and are forcing schools to comply no matter what the orders, like we just saw in Sarasota. In that school district, Bridget Zeigler happens to be the chairman of the school board. She also happens to be the co-founder of Moms For Liberty, a far-right wing political group that wants schools to eliminate all traces of LGBTQ rights, critical race theory or discussions about racial discrimination.

In Sarasota, parents, students and community members all flooded the school board chambers to have their say, and many spoke out against Zeigler’s proposal to force schools to comply with any and all ICE commands. In the end the vote was 3-2 in favor of Zeigler’s policy, but at the very least a message was made that the policy is largely unpopular, which brings us to the next piece of ammo we as teachers have in our arsenal: our voices.

We can talk to our students and parents about what is going on and inform them what their rights are. We can also make sure we ourselves are up to date on knowing what ICE can and can’t do legally (the ACLU for instance has put together this lovely fact sheet with all of that information clearly spelled out). There are also many places to go on the internet to learn even more about what students should do if ICE shows up at your classroom door. We can also post this information in our classrooms and around our schools so students can have easy access to it. Several organizations have created printable, easy to read fact sheets like this one. 

In some states, support is coming from elected officials, with legislation being passed in an effort to rein ICE in. Nevada’s legislature passed a bill last year that heavily restricts when agents are allowed to be on school property, but who knows if bills like that will be obeyed. We’ve already seen widely shared videos raising serious constitutional concerns, are these hooligans really going to abide by a legislative mandate?

At the end of the day what ICE is doing is making schools even more unsafe and panic-inducing than they already were. Now is the time to show our students and parents that we care about them. Get involved, get informed and get loud because although it doesn’t seem like it, when we all work together we can still affect change in this country. Even in Minnesota, where the situation is currently the bleakest we’ve seen, communities are coming together and curbing what’s happening to some degree — and we’re going to need a lot more of that for the foreseeable future.