I received a disturbing text message from my sister yesterday afternoon: “ICE has been at the girls’ old school today.”The girls, my nieces, used to attend World Language Immersion School in Columbus, Ohio, where they both studied French and developed rich relationships with the teachers and students. The school is situated in a quiet, residential neighborhood where kids often walk after school to the nearby shops in Clintonville to get ice cream or play board games.
ICE broke the peace yesterday. Local parents and community members say that ICE showed up at the school’s release time, likely targeting the large Latino/Hispanic population the school attracts. Neighbors and concerned parents—including my sister—showed up to make sure that students, most of whom are 11 to 14 years old, were able to get picked up and board their buses without being harassed.
ICE’s arrival in my hometown of Columbus follows a geographic pattern of concentrated enforcement in cities for a few days or weeks, and then moving on to the next town like roving bandits, more intent on instilling fear and sowing confusion rather than establishing law and order. Los Angeles. Chicago. Charlotte. Columbus. Your city could be next.
I spent most of 2013 to 2019 learning about the grassroots immigrant rights movement in the state and eventually playing a small role in creating the infrastructure and local policies that were intended to support the often ignored new American population in the city. ICE raids took place then, but they were rarer and more focused on organized crime, not nabbing people off the street outside middle schools and Home Depots.
My nieces’ former middle school wasn’t the only school ICE reportedly targeted. ICE was at or near Horizon Primary School, Dublin City Schools, and Scioto High School, as well as several other locations such as the immigrant neighborhoods and grocery stores across the city. As I wrote last week, Columbus is also home to a large Somali-American community that Trump cruelly disparaged.
These sightings all need to be verified through ground-truthing, but the precise locations are of secondary importance to the primary issue: the disruption caused for people living in the city who are legitimately worried about what ICE is doing, whether they are following the law, and who is being affected.
A loud, online, and radicalized minority of the country is undoubtedly gleeful over ICE’s arrest-bombing of various cities. But a growing number of Americans are having a hard time squaring the Trump administration’s claims online that they are going after the “worst of the worst” with the reality that ICE is circling schools and shopping centers to look for people who’s only observable immigration infraction is that they aren’t white.
City officials spoke out about immigration enforcement. Shannon Harding, president of Columbus City Council, wrote on Facebook that the city is not participating in, or helping with, ICE’s enforcement activity—but also said they can’t stop them, either. Harding said: “Feds are conducting operations in Columbus. I know our community is scared right now, but knowledge is power. Second Timothy tells us: ‘God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.’” The city maintains a list of resources on its website.
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City attorney Zach Klein said on Reddit that he was aware of ICE activity, warned residents to be safe, and added: “We know many of our immigrant families, friends, and neighbors are feeling anxious and afraid. You are all valued members of our city, and we’re fully committed to your safety.”
Community members have gone further by documenting ICE activity as it unfolds through photographs and videos, creating a list of vehicle descriptions and license plates associated with ICE, and coordinating across the city with social service organizations to provide responsive support to affected communities. Immigration attorneys are checking on their clients.
Even as I write this, friends are sending me new photographs every few minutes of law enforcement activity, including some photos of officers wearing green vests emblazoned with HSI in yellow block letters.
What is happening in Columbus this week is not law enforcement as most people understand it. It is a spectacle, meant to intimidate rather than protect. There is something especially corrosive about this kind of enforcement in a city like Columbus, which has spent decades welcoming newcomers and building a sense of shared community.
When federal agents descend on these spaces without transparency or accountability, they rupture trust not only among immigrant families, but among teachers, neighbors, and parents who suddenly find themselves forced into the role of first responders.
What unsettles me most is not only the fear this creates, but the recognition that this is now being normalized in a place I know well and for people close to me that I love. Columbus is not an abstraction to me; it is layered with relationships of the amazing people who have done so much to make the city a home for all of its residents. Watching the city become a site of heavy enforcement truly breaks my heart for all of the people who have to live through it.