The empty desks of deportation

Teachers feel the loss of children who once graced their classrooms

Photo © Michelle Gabel.

I sat down recently with two teachers from Central New York who have lost children from their classrooms to deportation. I’m not naming them or their school district to protect their privacy and the safety of their students and their families. One of the teachers wrote a brief essay that’s at the end of this post.

One of the unseen cruelties of mass deportations is the impact on school communities, especially on classroom teachers.

Each family separation, each deportation, means another empty desk where a child sat — learning, growing intellectually and emotionally, making friends, being a valued part of a nurturing community.

One day the child is there, the next day gone. Sent to a country where they’ve never been, where mom and dad haven't lived in years, perhaps decades.

The teachers I spoke with expressed frustration with those in Central New York who seem unaware — or unconcerned — that family separations, detentions and deportations are happening right in their back yard.

“We have lost our moral compass,” one said.

The teachers cited the fear and stress that haunt families — and entire school communities — when a family is in the crosshairs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not knowing if or when they will be rounded up, sent to a detention center in Louisiana or Texas and then deported.

An ICE agent told me recently that “despite what you hear on the news,” ICE doesn’t deport children, just adults. Parents, the agent said, make the decision to take the children with them — such a convenient rationalization when you’re paid to separate families.

When the threat of deportation becomes reality, mom and dad sometimes soften the blow by telling their younger children they’re going on a family vacation, an exciting trip somewhere new — rather than being ripped from the life they have known, their friends and routines, never to return.

There will be more of this cruelty in what’s left of summer vacation, and it likely will continue when school resumes in the fall.

The teachers I spoke with want school districts to be better prepared to assist and advocate for families in danger of deportation. But they don’t always have the luxury of time. Detentions and deportations can happen over a weekend.

For the coming school year, the goal of these teachers is to “push the relationship” with students beyond academics and address the fear and stress that lurk under the surface, affecting entire families.

The American Federation of Teachers website offers resources and lesson plans focusing on immigration, and collaborates with immigrant advocacy groups throughout the country. “Unions in general have a responsibility to stand up for movements for justice, especially when it touches our students,” said John Klingler, a high school history teacher in Cincinnati.

A former student of Klingler’s, Emerson Colindres, was detained during a regular ICE appointment just days after graduating in June, sent to a detention center and deported to Honduras. Colindres was a stellar student and soccer star, and has no criminal record. He has not lived in Honduras since he was 8 years old. He is just one of many high-achieving students throughout the country who have been deported.

While teachers’ lives revolve around sharing information and knowledge in the classroom, “We are creatures of emotion,” one of the Central New York teachers said. “I am saddened that we may be losing more students and neighbors.”

This particular teacher chooses to write to help navigate the many emotions that have come to the fore since Jan. 20, and wrote the essay below shortly after the end of the school year.

ICE Age — Reflections of a Teacher

As the ICE spreads in our country, there is another empty desk in my school, another smile missing, another name whited-out on a class roster.

The chill spreads in my heart. I feel like I am standing on a frozen lake with my students and the fragile layer of justice, compassion, democracy, welcoming, and basic human decency is cracking under the weight of a "Big Beautiful Bill" and a flood of fascism is seeping through the cracks.

I am angry because I cannot reach all these precious children, and my hands are bound by red tape and political pressure. Good intentions, prayers, and social outreach are the only lifelines I have to keep us from sinking and sometimes the tethers still break.

I am terrified and frustrated because I do not know which one of our students will be pulled into the crippling current of criminalization and condemnation next.

Which one will be the next child to have to choose between their citizenship and their family? Which one will be forced to say goodbye to their friends, their school, their home, and pack everything they have known into a single bag? Which one will be the next to be called in front of a judge to listen to their family relinquish their dreams for safety and liberty?

The ICE is spreading from the polar caps to the equator and it is not just coming for “criminals.” It's coming for our children, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. The air is growing thicker in the current political climate, and any common ground ... thinner.

As an educator I shudder in fear and despair as I implore our government to fulfill its promises that "we are all created equal.” I beg our community to stand in courage, and appeal to all people to remember our humanity and to love others.

God please grant me the serenity I need to protect my students, guide me to the resources to support those being detained, and give me the resolve to prevent our democracy's extinction and help us ALL put an end to this ICE age.