CMS teacher: I’ve already seen the impact from Charlotte’s Border Patrol surge | Opinion

On Monday morning, I stood outside my school to greet students as they got off the bus. Our school counselor and a couple of other teachers had made signs to set a positive tone in the face of very difficult circumstances, and I was holding a sign that read ¡Perteneces Aquí! (You Belong Here). So many students who read our signs seemed pleased by the welcoming Monday morning message. Unfortunately, many of our students weren’t there to see it.

With the Trump administration’s Border Patrol and ICE activity entering its third day, that’s the story across much of Charlotte, as fearful residents hunker down to avoid the danger of being accosted by agents who are operating with next to no guardrails. Under the first Trump presidency, schools, churches and hospitals were protected areas. Not anymore.

Mass deportations were central to Trump’s 2024 campaign platform–remember “They’re eating the dogs?” And after winning the election, President Trump didn’t waste a minute.

On Inauguration Day, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security rescinded a Biden policy which designated certain places such as schools “essential,” saying immigration enforcement must be conducted with careful consideration of “its impact on other people and broader societal interest.” The new DHS guidelines eliminated protected areas, instead vaguely directing agents to use “a healthy dose of common sense” in carrying out their duties.

On the first day of the Charlotte operation, agents descended upon a church on the east side where members were doing yardwork while their children played. Some fled into the woods as officers arrested one man and took him away, leaving his wife and children behind.

The same day, near South Boulevard agents smashed a truck window and violently dragged US citizen Willy Aceituno from his vehicle, just minutes after he verified his immigration status for other agents. Common sense was apparently in short supply. These incidents and many more across the country make clear that anyone with Black or Brown skin is a potential target of La Migra, regardless of citizenship.

With horrific stories like these filling news feeds everywhere, it is completely understandable that large numbers of immigrant families have decided to keep their children home from school until the danger has subsided. At a time when the rule of law increasingly feels like a relic of the past, a 1982 Supreme Court decision affirming that all children have the right to a public education regardless of immigration status doesn’t feel like sufficient protection anymore.

Based on how similar operations in blue cities have played out across the country, we can hope that soon these agents will leave and our students will return. Counselors will be available to support students navigating this frightening time, and teachers will bend over backward to catch them up on what they missed. But the impact on our children’s mental and physical health will remain, creating new challenges for schools to address.

According to a UC-Riverside report from this summer, even the threat of being separated from family can result in “profound emotional harm,” including anxiety, depression and behavioral problems. Fear of a family member being disappeared can lead to academic disengagement and increased absenteeism. Attendance data from schools in central California showed a 22% increase in absences following immigration raids, with the youngest learners the most impacted.

Our schools should be sanctuaries where all students feel they belong, not places of fear and surveillance. Our children should be able to enjoy their Constitutional right to come and learn alongside their peers, undistracted by anxiety about whether their mom or dad will be there when they get home. So what is a community to do when those things aren’t happening?

If we genuinely believe in the promise of public education, we have to defend it. That means demanding policies that protect schools as essential and off limits to immigration enforcement. It means speaking out against raids that terrorize families, US citizens or not. And it means standing together with our students so they know that every single one of them pertenece aquí.

Justin Parmenter is a seventh-grade language arts teacher at South Academy of International Languages in Charlotte.

This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 10:27 AM.