Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known as ICE — was founded in 2003 in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to “promote homeland security and public safety.” Now, it’s an agency that instills fear and uncertainty into the American people, and more specifically, into the minds of the next generation of voters, workers, and leaders.
Students are the future of the world; whether they are elementary, middle, high school, or even college students, they are instrumental in forming a better society. When students begin living in fear rather than focusing on education and their aspirations, the effects ripple far beyond the classroom.
“I think the goal of the [Trump] administration is to create a climate of fear,” Boston University Clinical Professor of Law Karen Pita Loor said. “And it’s been successful, unfortunately.”
Since Trump has taken office, overall tension and fear have risen, creating a blanket of anxiety that is meant to terrorize all immigrants in the U.S., legal or not.
A new nationally-representative survey by the Education Week Research Center found that of the educators surveyed who work with students from immigrant families, half say their students have expressed fear or anxiety this school year because of ICE. Nearly a quarter reported drops in attendance, and another quarter saw students disengaging in class. Additionally, 75% of those teachers say the fear is directly interfering with learning. This perfectly demonstrates how ICE, under the Trump administration, is negatively affecting students and their learning instead of “promoting homeland security and public safety.”
Due to this fear, students around the country are speaking up. One student from Hillsboro High School in Oregon, junior Manny Chavez, recently went viral online for testifying during a Hillsboro City Council meeting, pleading for the city to take action regarding immigration enforcement. His message spoke volumes and reached millions of people online.
“I shouldn’t live like this as a 16-year-old, I shouldn’t be scared, I should be focused on school, and I can’t even focus,” Chavez said.
Chavez isn’t alone; some students at Westford Academy share this fear, including ‘Jane,’ an American-born student at Westford Academy who preferred to use a fake name to stay anonymous and to protect her family. Jane is the daughter of immigrant parents who are naturalized citizens. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, Jane is a legal citizen since she was born in America, yet she still fears for her safety.
“I have this little feeling inside of me that’s just always afraid, just seeing the horror stories on the news and online […] of ICE marching into high schools and taking all these kids,” Jane said. “It’s scary, so I just always have that innate fear, but I don’t show it.”
Jane doesn’t just fear for her own safety, but also the safety of some of her friends and family who weren’t born on U.S. soil.
“I know my parents are affected by this, and I have some friends [who] are immigrants that are paranoid about this, so most of my fear is for them,” Jane said.
Having students fear for their own friends and family only adds to the outstanding stress teenagers carry from their school work and personal life, which in turn negatively impacts attendance and academic performance. Stories like Jane’s are common across the country, which appears to be the goal of the Trump administration’s ICE force: to make immigrants, legal or not, scared on a day-to-day basis, as demonstrated by their highly advertised warnings. Due to a recent Trump administration action, this fear can extend outside of the classroom and into other areas as well.
On Jan. 20, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected certain sensitive locations — such as churches, schools, and hospitals — from ICE actions. Now, ICE agents have unbridled power to execute immigration patrols in those sensitive places using “a healthy dose of common sense.” This allows agents to use their own discretion when making arrests, which can be based on anything from how someone looks to where they are, what they’re doing, or the language that they are speaking.
“A healthy dose of common sense” can also mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To me, a healthy dose of common sense should mean detaining and arresting people only based on the known facts, not appearances and initial assumptions. ICE using loose terminology to justify their actions on duty is unprofessional and has no place in a serious role that has the power to destroy lives, such as that of an immigration officer.
Since DHS rescinded the policy, according to an article released by Law Group International that compiled data from other sources, an estimated 487 arrests have been made at or near schools, 156 at churches or religious sites, 203 at hospitals and clinics, and 891 at courthouses, marking an 8,100% increase from January to December 2024 and January to October 2025. These figures are likely a severe underestimation, since ICE doesn’t disclose where arrests occur, only the total number.
Allowing ICE to roam freely in these sensitive areas is another blunder of the Trump administration. These places were protected for a reason, and violent and disruptive acts, like the ones ICE is committing, should not occur where immigrants attend hearings, pray for safety, recover from injuries, and especially not where students learn.
Just this past August, federal agents allegedly arrested a 15-year-old boy with special needs by mistake and held him and his mother at gunpoint while the boy’s sister was registering for classes at Arleta High School in Los Angeles. Neither DHS nor ICE has apologized, and federal agents claimed they were “conducting a targeted operation” on another “criminal illegal alien,” which means they thought this boy was someone else based on their initial interactions with him.
When guns are drawn on innocent civilians based on how they appear in the eyes of masked agents, it is clear why people of ethnically diverse backgrounds are scared to leave their homes.
This incident most likely caused the family to experience serious trauma and mental distress. A mother and her son were just in their car waiting for one of their family members to finish registering for classes. They likely didn’t expect to be held at gunpoint, and to see masked officers storming their car and holding them hostage, but that’s exactly what happened to the family on a sunny August day in their hometown.
There are stories like this at a local level, right here in the heart of Westford, a deep blue town nearly 2,500 miles away from the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
Westford Police Chief Mark Chambers recently told a story at a Westford League of Women Voters meeting about an ICE arrest that happened in Westford last October.
According to Chambers, an individual was taken into custody after Westford police officers noticed that the individual was driving without a license. They were taken through the routine booking process, that included taking photographs and fingerprints, which is organized through an online system that ICE has access to.
“ICE was notified through [the online] system that we had somebody in our custody who was under an immigration detainer at the time,” Chambers said. “They asked us to hold him, we said ‘no’, they waited outside, so once he was bailed out, he walked out of the station, and they did take him into custody.”
ICE agents were told “no” when they asked to take a man away from his home, so they waited outside the Westford Police Department building to arrest him as soon as he was released from custody.
Although this situation occurred before Trump took office, other instances of innocent civilians being detained and reported are still common across Massachusetts. According to Chambers, undocumented immigrants often come to the attention of the police because of minor issues like a driver’s license violation. ICE is single-handedly destroying the American dream by making sure no legal or illegal immigrant feels safe in their own home.
These are just a few of the countless horrifying stories that have accumulated since ICE was given “unbridled power” by the Trump administration. Seeing as ICE’s funding will triple next fiscal year due to the “Big Beautiful Bill” passing, the stories, deportations, and fear will only triple in scale. If nothing changes, the trauma won’t just continue — it will grow.