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Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election last November, kids around the country have been scared about what his promise of mass deportations might mean for them and their classmates.
“They come up and say, ‘What’s going to happen, teacher?’” Elma Alvarez, an instructional specialist at an elementary school in Tucson, Arizona, told me.
Now the fear in classrooms has ratcheted up to a new level, thanks to a directive issued last week allowing immigration agents to arrest people at schools and other “sensitive areas” that they’ve avoided in the past. Anxiety ramped up even further last Friday after federal agents who showed up at a Chicago elementary school were initially mistaken for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
They were actually Secret Service agents, but the episode…