How to use this toolkit
- Learn how to advocate for safe schools with your school districts and local governments.
- Find resources to keep you and your students safe and healthy.
- Tools to organize your buildings and worksites around safety.
Resource Guides
Resource Guides
ICE Activity Hotline, volunteer opportunities, trainings, and more.
Policy recommendations and example policy language from fellow union campaigns in Chicago, LA, and more.
Helpful resources to take care of yourself and your students.
Student and Staff Resource Guide
A helpful list of tasks to organize with your co-workers around this crucial issue.
Our Message
Transformational Conversations
Key Points
No child should ever walk into a classroom wondering whether their family will be intact when the school day ends. Traumatizing children and families is not — and must never be — considered acceptable government policy.
This crisis does not affect only immigrant children. Fear ripples through every classroom. Adult staff and caregivers are terrified of being targeted. When we are worried about safety, learning is interrupted for everyone. Schools should be sacred spaces.
We call on local governments to establish clear protections that explicitly prohibit Border Patrol and ICE from operating or staging on public property, including school grounds. We must safeguard both the safety of children and the integrity of the learning environment.
This is a deliberate attempt by the Trump Administration to advance a billionaire-backed agenda by dividing working-class Americans through racial fear. Fear is being deployed as a political tactic to turn Black, Brown, and white communities against one another.
But in Charlotte and other communities, we are already seeing the opposite. Families, educators, and community leaders are showing up for one another by delivering food, checking in on neighbors, keeping students safe, and refusing to be divided. When we stand together across race and background, we are stronger than fear.
Background
Background
While there has never been a formal policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from entering schools, churches, or other sensitive locations, educators have long relied on the moral understanding that these spaces should remain safe for all families. Recent actions and statements from federal and state officials confirm that this long-standing practice is no longer being respected, placing educators, students, and entire communities in an untenable position.
NCAE believes that every child deserves to feel safe at school, regardless of immigration status. We are committed to standing with immigrant students and families, and to ensuring our members have the tools and knowledge to protect their school communities.
Our partnership with Siembra NC continues to be a vital part of this work. Siembra NC organizes across the state to defend immigrant rights, provide rapid response and legal support, and train community members to monitor and document ICE activity. We encourage members to connect with Siembra NC’s local chapters and take part in their Know Your Rights and ICE verifier trainings.
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