‘Throwing them in jail would send a message’: Pro-Trump accounts target teachers resisting potential immigration raids at schools
As the online right gleefully attacks educators who say they won’t comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at schools, the administration of President Donald Trump is sending mixed messages on the subject.
President Trump scrapped a policy last week that previously limited the actions of ICE and border patrol agents at “sensitive locations,” such as schools, places of worship, and medical facilities. The guidance had been in place for ICE since 2011, including during Trump’s first term.
Border czar Tom Homan and deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller defended the policy change in news interviews over the last few days.
“Never say never,” Homan told NBC News when asked if school and church raids were on the table. “If he’s a significant public safety threat that’s in what we used to call a ‘sensitive location,’ no, we’re going to enforce the law.”
But an AP-NORC poll conducted earlier this month found that a majority of U.S. adults — including a plurality of Republicans — oppose arresting undocumented adults at church or undocumented children at school. Perhaps knowing that arrests at these sites are widely unpopular, Homan and other officials have framed their messaging on immigration raids carefully.
In one high-profile case, the Trump administration seized on a false report last Friday about ICE targeting a school in Chicago to accuse the media of spreading misinformation.
“Are you going to delete your false tweet or do you just enjoy stoking division?” wrote White House communications staffer Alex Pfeiffer in response to an X post about the incident.
In a video that has racked up 1.6 million views on X, Homan told Dr. Phil — of all people — that ICE wasn’t entering schools and arresting undocumented children, but did not mention whether adults could be targeted.
ICE did not immediately respond to The Daily Dot’s requests for comment.
The administration’s unclear messaging on the controversial new policy, however, hasn’t stopped the online right from unleashing its fury on educators who speak out against the raiding of schools.
The widely followed Libs of TikTok account on X has posted roughly a dozen videos over the past week of teachers or administrators saying they wouldn’t allow ICE into schools, stirring up a mass of right-wing followers.
“Throwing some of these school superintendents, principals, and teachers in jail would send a message,” one reply said. “This needs to stop!”
“It will all end when one of them goes to jail,” an "America First" account with 1.2 million followers wrote.
Even Elon Musk chimed in to respond to one teacher, saying it would be a “frozen day in hell” before an ICE officer enters her classroom.
“Obstruction of the law is crime,” the tech mogul warned in a 4:51am post on X.
But at least one teacher became a minor celebrity on the right after he asked ICE to investigate his own students in Fort Worth, Texas, complaining that many of them “don’t even speak English.”
Fort Worth Independent School District said in a statement it was investigating the comments.
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