Across Northwest Oregon, I regularly meet with early childhood professionals, educators, superintendents and community leaders who dedicate their lives to helping children learn, grow and thrive. Lately, those conversations have taken on a troubling new urgency.
Instead of talking about lesson plans or graduation rates, educators are asking me what to do when immigration enforcement appears near school grounds. They share stories of children distracted by fear, families afraid to ask for help and staff struggling to support students carrying adult-sized burdens into the classroom.
These stories are heartbreaking, and they demand our attention and action.
School leaders from urban, suburban and rural communities across Northwest Oregon describe the same reality: Fear is disrupting education. Students are missing school to care for younger siblings after a parent is detained. High-achieving students are falling behind, not because they lack ability, but because trauma makes learning impossible. Field trips are canceled. Families are afraid to walk their children to school, seek food assistance, or ask for language support because they are worried that visibility could put them at risk.
In one community, first graders spent an entire lesson sharing their fears, each child with a story shaped by immigration enforcement. In one school district, teachers said they are quietly estate planning because they would put their body on the line between their students and ICE. No child should have to carry that weight, nor should any teacher.
This is the human cost of an immigration enforcement system that has lost its way.
Donald Trump promised to target the so-called worst of the worst. What Americans are witnessing instead is a campaign of terror and reckless mass deportation that is destabilizing communities, traumatizing children and eroding trust in government. ICEÂ has maliciously swept up veterans, long-time residents with no criminal records and working families. U.S. citizens have been detained and deported. Federal agents have shot and killed people during enforcement actions, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Keith Porter. A 5-year-old child, Liam Ramos, was reportedly used as bait during an operation and was sent to a detention center in another state, far from home.Â
Educators and communities are doing what they can. School districts are working with attorneys to follow Oregon’s sanctuary law, which was passed decades ago to keep our communities safe. School staff are trained to respond to unidentified agents. Schools have created internal alert systems, organized walking groups, coordinated with community organizations and even provided door-to-door transportation to keep students safe. Volunteers have trained thousands of residents to observe and report enforcement activity, operate hotlines and coordinate mutual aid. This reflects the best of Oregon—neighbors protecting neighbors.
But educators and communities cannot do this alone, nor should they have to.
What makes this crisis even more alarming is that Americans are paying for it. Last year, the partisan H.R.1, a Big Ugly Bill, gave roughly $75 billion to ICE and about $65 billion to Customs and Border Protection. This is an enormous amount of your taxpayer dollars that could have gone to health care, education, or economic development—but instead are funding mass deportation efforts that have not delivered safety or order. Instead, that spending has fueled fear, trauma and violence—while pulling resources away from programs that actually strengthen families and communities.
This must end. We need to completely overhaul our immigration system, including ICE, to make it more humane. Kristi Noem has violated the trust of the American people through lies and illegal actions and must resign or be impeached.
And we need common sense guardrails to stop this from happening again. I’ve introduced legislation to prohibit immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like schools, require federal agents to take off masks and display identifying information, prevent unmarked vehicles from being used in arrests and stop other authoritarian policing practices. Congress must also block arrests without judicial warrants, guarantee full and independent investigations into all Department of Homeland Security related shootings, end the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and enforce basic standards of care in detention facilities.
These reforms will not fix everything. But they draw a clear line between lawful enforcement and abuse of power.
Learning cannot happen when children are afraid. Schools must be safe spaces. Students and their families should be protected, not terrorized.
Congress has the power to set clear guardrails. It is time to use it.
Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici represents Northwest Oregon and is a leader on the Education and Workforce Committee and ranking member of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee. Prior to being elected to Congress she spent hundreds of hours volunteering in public schools.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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