"Are we going to practice like an [active shooter] drill for when ICE comes?"
"What if I go home today and my parents are already gone?"
These are the kinds of things that students around the country are saying as they stay away from school amid growing anxiety over Donald Trump's anti-immigration crackdown. Will ICE officers be patrolling school grounds? Will we be safe waiting for the bus? When students do show up, their teachers are increasingly unsure of what to tell them.
My colleagues Isabela Dias and Sophie Hurwitz spoke with several educators in the Boston area about the dread looming over classrooms, where many desks sit empty. "This is so sad," a third grade teacher said. "I don’t know why it touched me like that: The sun beaming on the tables that were empty.”
This, of course, is exactly what the Trump administration intended: fear. Its brutal effectiveness can be seen in these empty classrooms.
—Inae Oh
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