While American students are falling behind in reading, writing, and basic life skills, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, is working overtime to shield illegal immigrants from deportation—not by educating parents, teachers, and students about legal pathways to becoming citizens, but by encouraging school districts to obstruct federal law and become immigration enforcement “Safe Zones.” According to the NEA’s official website, the union proudly supports Safe Zone School Districts, where teachers and staff are trained to resist cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and shield students and families facing deportation. The goal? To keep immigration authorities off school campuses and create a system where enforcement of federal law is subverted under the guise of “protection.”
Let that sink in. The same union that fought to keep schools closed for years during COVID is now pushing for policies that shield non-citizens from the law, while American citizens are stuck dealing with the fallout of a broken education system. Talk about misguided priorities. American children are robbed of crucial learning time in the classroom, but the union is fighting for illegal aliens, tooth and nail.
In any other context, this would rightly be described as a crime, namely, obstruction of justice. But when it is wrapped in buzzwords like “safe zone” or “community support,” the NEA expects zero pushback.
Now imagine if a group of Americans tried to create “safe zones” to shield people from tax law enforcement (not the worst idea?) or child welfare investigations. How would that be received?
Here is another double standard: January 6 defendants were charged with “obstructing a federal proceeding” and handed multiyear prison sentences, and many were kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time. But when schools and unions do the same to block immigration enforcement? The media shrugs. No DOJ press conferences. No televised hearings. No accusations of “threats to democracy” or our nation’s safety. When you think about it in this context, it’s frankly infuriating.
Fearmongering vs Reality
But all that aside, no real evidence shows that ICE is raiding schools. What has changed is that under Trump, a 2011 policy that discouraged enforcement actions in “sensitive locations” such as schools and churches was reversed, meaning ICE is no longer formally restricted from those areas. This policy shift has triggered a wave of fearmongering, despite the fact that ICE is still not carrying out raids on school campuses. However, some undocumented immigrants have taken shelter in churches for weeks at a time to avoid deportation, which was widely reported during both the Trump and Biden years. The NEA is using this change to justify its Safe Zone policies built around a hypothetical threat that has not actually materialized in schools.
Take a recent example from April 2025 in Los Angeles. Reports exploded on social media claiming ICE agents had been spotted on a school campus. Students panicked, teachers staged a walkout, and local press aggressively repeated the claim. But when the district investigated, the “raid” turned out to be a routine visit by Homeland Security Investigations to conduct a welfare check on two unaccompanied migrant children, not an enforcement action.
Or look at what just happened in Chicago’s Waukegan School District. District officials sent out a mass warning that ICE agents had entered a local school again, causing widespread fear and outrage. But just hours later, the district admitted it was wrong. ICE was never on campus. In fact, they were not even involved. In this case, the agents were part of another federal agency unrelated to immigration enforcement and were investigating a threat over a TikTok ban.
Let’s be clear: two major school panic incidents within weeks of each other, zero actual ICE raids. It seems that the only people causing a distraction to learning are those who, like the NEA, think that any “federal-looking” official visiting a school campus must be an ICE agent, out to snatch children from classrooms.
A close friend of mine, who is an elementary school teacher in California, recently told me about one of her students who has not been to school in weeks. He is just seven years old, undocumented, and terrified that if he shows up to school, he will be deported. Now he is missing the last month of school, falling even further behind in a system where he was already struggling. My friend sees how much this fear is costing him, academically and emotionally. Who is to blame for this? ICE and the Trump administration? Or the fear-mongering left-wing activists who have taken over our education system?
This is what happens when the media and activist groups selectively amplify fear. Under President Obama, deportations hit record highs, even as schools aired his speeches in cafeterias for immigrant children to watch. There were no viral sob stories. No protests. No crying influencers. And under President Biden, deportations quietly continued, including of unaccompanied minors, with barely a word from the press.
In fact, according to a 2023 study by the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, the Biden administration deported tens of thousands of unaccompanied children without giving them a court hearing. That’s right, they denied these children that “due process” we are now told is the most sacred thing in America, thus contradicting the entire narrative that he conducted more “compassionate deportations” (whatever that means).
Yet back then, there were no viral TikToks. No school walkouts. No NEA Safe Zone campaigns targeting Biden. The same people who cried under Trump stayed quiet. Their compassion for illegal immigrant students is conditional. It’s a political farce, pulled out when it’s convenient for their goals.
Politics over Education
So while our nation’s educational system continues to fail our children, the most powerful forces in schools are pushing their political agendas. The NEA is not just a union, but a political lobbying machine. According to its own LM-2 financial filings, the union spent over $67 million on political activity during the 2020 election cycle, nearly all of it for left-wing candidates and causes.
Instead of fighting to raise reading scores or restore academic discipline, the union has taken up pet causes: promoting gender transitions in schools without parental notification, pushing training inspired by critical race theory, and now enabling safe harbor policies for people violating immigration law while sowing unjustified fear among students and staff.
Our public schools are plagued with problems and failing to meet their most basic goals. Parents are pulling their kids out of them in record numbers. Homeschooling is surging. School violence is rising. And the NEA? They are busy training educators how to resist ICE.
