When ICE Enforcement Creates Fear

It begins with disappearance.

In March of 2025, families in New Mexico woke up to find loved ones gone. Forty-eight people were apprehended during ICE operations across Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Roswell. No names released. No locations given. No clear answers about where anyone was being held.

For adults, this kind of uncertainty is destabilizing. For children, it is something else entirely. When a family cannot locate someone, the house changes. Meals lose their rhythm. Sleep becomes fragmented. Voices lower without explanation. Children may not know what happened, but they feel the absence of stability, and they begin to scan the world differently. Who might disappear next? Whether they could be next?

In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has been at the center of national controversy following a surge of federal enforcement actions in Minneapolis that have rattled families and communities alike. What was meant to be routine immigration work has instead sparked fatal confrontations, fear in neighborhoods, and a profound sense of insecurity among parents who simply want safety for their children.

On January 7, 2026, Minneapolis was rocked when ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American mother of three. That day began with what officials described as an enforcement action, but it ended in tragedy for a resident whose life ended in a moment that has been deeply questioned by neighbors, civil rights leaders, and elected officials. Video and eyewitness accounts have raised serious doubts about whether deadly force was necessary.

In Florida, fear arrived with words that were spoken out loud. ICE pulled over a construction truck on the way to work. Four men were taken that day. They showed documentation. They had green cards. Legal paperwork issued by the government. Still, they were detained When asked why they were detaining the workers, their response was simple. “Because we can.”

Four months later, no one knows where those men are.

Their wives are not allowed to speak to them. Their children are afraid to go to school, afraid their parents will not be there when the day ends. Mothers will not answer the door unless they recognize the person knocking. One woman refuses medical care for an injury because she fears leaving her children alone if she is taken.

Extended families are stepping in to cover rent for those who can no longer pay. They are buying groceries, keeping households afloat, while fear lingers just beneath the surface of ordinary days. And the fear does not just stay with the adults.

Children begin to watch departures closely. They ask the same questions again and again. “Are you coming back?” They hesitate at school doors. They grow hyper-aware of hospitals, police cars, and authority figures. This is a nervous system responding to perceived threat.

In Oregon, fear spread through a community.

When Moises Sotelo-Casas, a well-known vineyard services business owner in Newberg, was detained, it was not just one family that felt the impact. It was an entire town. Reports differed about his legal status, but for parents listening to their children ask questions, the details mattered less than the message received.

If a respected community member can be taken, what does that mean for us?

Children are listening when news reports flash conflicting narratives. They see streets filled with protests and hear adults debate whether federal force is protecting or intimidating communities. They absorb the tension when a disabled neighbor is pulled from her car or when a mother’s life ends in a split second of violence. Fear is not abstract for them. It becomes part of their understanding of what safety feels like at home.

Children ask questions that sound simple.
“Can they take you?”
“Do rules protect us?”

When parents do not know how to answer, silence can fill the space with imagined danger.

In Minneapolis, these actions took on a more personal weight, affecting not just individuals, but the fabric of families and the daily rhythms of their communities. Reports described four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe detained during an ICE operation in Minneapolis, with one individual later reported released and others believed to be held at or connected to the Fort Snelling ICE facility. Tribal leaders stated that the individuals were enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe and expressed alarm over the detentions, while federal officials disputed aspects of the account, including the circumstances and justification for the arrests.

The conflicting statements left families without clear answers. Where are the detained individuals being held? On what grounds? For how long? In the absence of clarity, fear filled the gaps.

For families already familiar with having their identity questioned, the impact was immediate and destabilizing. Not because of politics or policy, but because of what it signals when belonging itself appears open to dispute.

For children, identity is safety. When a child hears, “They didn’t believe who we are,” it lands in the body as threat. The nervous system doesn’t care about policy; it processes threat.

What helps children most in moments like these is not explanation. And it is not reassurance. Nothing said can make the situation make sense. Nothing said can replace the absence of a parent, a family member, a known outcome.

What helps is something quieter and more limited.

Clear daily anchors:  Who is picking them up? Where they will they sleep? What happens next today, not forever. Honest language without detail. “Something hard is happening.” “I don’t have answers.” “I’m here.”

When a parent can breathe, pause, and remain emotionally available in the middle of fear, a child learns something small but essential. That even now, they are not alone. That fear can exist without complete collapse. In homes touched by uncertainty, steadiness becomes a way to hold children through what cannot be fixed.