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| Source: VCG/Qian Weizhong |
In this blog we draw on an article published by The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. This article is entitled, How ICE Raids Are Affecting Children—And What Schools Can Do and is authored by Nirvi Shah. You can read the full article here. Below we offer several excerpts. Future blogs will expand on how afterschool programs are responding and how programs can prepare.
Nirvi Shah writes, “Vázquez Baur, who once worked as a math teacher, says her own training for the classroom didn’t prepare her for working with students learning English or immigrant children. She sometimes found herself acting as an interpreter for families and had no training related to immigration enforcement activity. This was during the first Trump administration, she notes.
Now, educators need practices specific to the circumstances of the modern era, she says. One of the second Trump administration’s early acts on immigration was to remove a policy that limited immigration and border agent activity in or near schools, houses of worship, and hospitals.
Some schools have tried to fortify their campuses in response. In Connecticut, for instance, last year the superintendent in New Haven began requiring school principals to handle any interaction with immigration authorities. A principal must gather warrants or other documents and send them to lawyers for review before any officer can enter a school building.
Long-term, however, the involvement of law enforcement in these operations makes things tricky for students and schools, researcher, Dr. Kerry Ressler notes. “When you grow up in a small town in which you know all the local police and they know you by name, it’s a sense of trust: We need to have these uniformed officers to protect us, rather than do something to us.”
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Thousands of protesters march during the ICE Out of Minnesota march in Minneapolis, on January 23, 2026. © Lorie Shaull |
Some communities have seen officers who are masked and essentially unidentifiable, sometimes not wearing uniforms, apprehending people. (The court system has reprimanded ICE for some of its tactics.) “If you’re a kid and you’re in a family and everybody’s scared and no one’s feeling they’re here to protect us, they’re not getting any of those signals,” Ressler says. “Everybody is just feeling scared.”
Schools regularly prepare students for other emergencies, he said, with fire drills, tornado drills, and increasingly, active shooter drills.
“One of the areas that I think seems to hold true in child psychology and stress literature is controllable versus uncontrollable situations. It’s sort of like basic training for the military: The more you can train for a certain situation, the less you are likely to panic,” Ressler says. “For the majority of kids that would be helpful.”
Schools are faced with raising the prospect of officers’ presence and explaining what might happen—in an apolitical way.
“Some language people are using that can be helpful for kids is things like: ‘Officers are here to arrest certain people, but they aren’t always being careful, and some people are scared that they might get hurt by the officers,’” says Hopewell Hodges, a therapist who is completing her doctorate at the University of Minnesota in clinical and developmental psychology. She was speaking during a January webinar on supporting children during immigration enforcement operations.
Ressler says he is hopeful that later on, in communities where immigration enforcement was pronounced, local police will go to schools and rebuild a relationship of trust with their local community, differentiating their work from other law enforcement officers. Otherwise, “what this sets up for is a whole generation of people who further distrust authority.”
“’For now talking early, and often, with kids is essential,’ Hodges said in the video. ‘A lot of research shows that when children go through tough or scary things, they are often a lot less afraid if grownups have prepared them about what to expect.’”
It doesn’t have to be one big talk, either, she said, citing a metaphor once shared with her about a child eating an apple, coming back again and again for small bites. It’s important just to open the door at all, to offer the apple, in the first place.
“If a trusted grown-up in a kid’s life doesn’t bring something up, what a little kid is often thinking is one of two things: either this isn’t a topic that’s OK to talk about. Maybe it’s rude or offensive or wrong if I want to talk about it. I’ll just suppress it.
“Or they maybe think the grown-up isn’t ready to talk,” she said.
Overall, however, schools should do the things they always do.
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“I have had a lot of feelings recently that these times are just extraordinary. We use words like unprecedented. We use words like record-breaking,” Hodges said. “And it can be tempting to think that what children need, in unusual or extraordinary times, is unusual and extraordinary.” But schools should concentrate on caring for kids’ bodies and brains in their usual ways, she says.
Even if schools feel compelled to create spaces for children to talk, they should also fortify opportunities for children to play, be creative, and feel grounded, in activities like sports, pottery, music, dance, and sensory play. They can promote regulation and connection to cultural practices, she said, channeling her colleague Dr. Robin Young, the chief psychologist at the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis, who often works with elementary school students.
Schools don’t always have to find all-new programs or strategies for times like these, but they can invest in staff well-being so that staff can keep showing up for kids and schools can keep doing what they do well.”
We queried Google AI to learn more about what schools can do to protect youth while the threat of ICE raids are possible. Below are the responses:
- Implement "Safe Spaces" Policies: Schools can adopt policies that limit ICE access to campuses, requiring judicial warrants rather than administrative warrants.
- Confidentiality and Data Protection: Schools are generally prohibited from sharing student information for immigration enforcement purposes and should protect privacy.
- Mental Health Support: Schools can provide on-site counselors, therapists, and social workers to help children process trauma, anxiety, and fear.
- Know Your Rights Trainings: Educators can distribute information on rights to families and help them create emergency plans, such as appointing power of attorney for children.
- Community Partnerships: Collaborating with legal aid and nonprofit organizations helps build a protective safety net for families.
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| Nirvi Shah |
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