Some students in Chicago aren’t going to school. Not because they don’t want to learn, but because weeks of aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids — featuring masked, heavily-armed agents in unmarked cars, and a nighttime, commando-style helicopter raid — have left them too afraid to attend class, advocates say.
Fear in the Windy City grew after the Trump administration ramped up “Operation Midway Blitz.” The immigration crackdown, launched against city officials’ wishes, has led to the arrest of more than 800 undocumented immigrants since Sept. 8, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“It is a departure from everything that young people have understood from our America,” Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says about the escalating presence and actions of immigration authorities in the city.
Aggressive tactics allegedly used by ICE agents include the use of tear gas near an elementary school, raiding a South Side apartment in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and detaining and zip-tying U.S. citizens and children, including Black folks.
DHS has denied many of these claims and has not responded to Word In Black’s request for comment.
‘They Are Hurting Young People’
The fallout shows up in the classroom. Fedrick C. Ingram, the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, says the presence of immigration authorities is harmful for young people to see.
“They are hurting young people every day, because they see violence,” Ingram says about ICE. “But our federal government is enacting violence on people every day, that young people are seeing over and over on social media, on cable news, and all over their computer systems. And this has to stop.”
Research also shows that ICE raids can have a lasting effect on a school community — increased absenteeism is one of the effects. A day after ICE’s Oct. 2 raid on an apartment in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, dozens of students at the nearby Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Paideia Academy School, were absent from class, an unnamed school employee told the South Side Weekly. The predominantly Black elementary school serves 75 English Language Learners, 60 of whom did not show up for class.
“Those things are detrimental to the development of a child,” Gates of the CTU says. “That type of trauma doesn’t just stay in the time and the space where it happens; it comes to the school community.”
Chicago Public Schools emphasized in a statement that it does not collaborate with federal immigration authorities and said that although there was “law enforcement activity” near some schools last Friday, there weren’t any “incidents” inside the city’s schools.
A Nationwide Problem
Even with the protections created by the city and school district, some families still kept their kids home. And it’s not just happening in Chicago. In Chelsea, Massachusetts — a Boston suburb with a heavy Hispanic and Latino immigrant population — nearly 1,000 students have transferred out of the school district since October 2024, Boston NPR reported. A sizeable portion are either leaving for other Massachusetts school districts or leaving the U.S. altogether.
Meanwhile, tensions between Chicago’s leadership and the federal government continue to escalate. On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers to Chicago.
In response to the deployment, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration. The suit, filed on Monday, states that the federal government failed to provide a lawful reason for deploying the National Guard in the state, and none exists. The federal government has until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday to respond to the lawsuit, a federal judge ruled.
