TikTok Teachers Are Using Shooter-Drill Skills to Prep for ICE Raids
Sarah has considered what she would do if a mass shooter entered the high school where she teaches. The Career and Technical Education teacher, whose name has been changed for privacy, says she would barricade her classroom door, turn off the lights, and instruct her students to hide. Those are the same actions she’s planning on taking if an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shows up at her classroom door. “What you would do in a [school shooter] situation is try and prevent as many casualties as possible. I guess the same thing goes for ICE as well,” says Sarah, who teaches at a school in Texas just hours from the Mexico border.
Schools, healthcare facilities, and places of worship used to be considered “sensitive locations,” which ICE was barred from entering. On Jan. 21, hours after President Trump’s inauguration, his administration rescinded that protection, allowing agents to enter formerly protected places to conduct arrests. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” reads the Department of Homeland Security statement on the policy. On TikTok, teachers and faculty members are sharing videos about what they’re planning on doing in case of ICE raids at their schools. In a video viewed 10.6 million times, a teacher ties up her hair behind text that reads, “When I see ICE pull up to my school Thinking imma let my babies go with them.” The videos, many of which cycle from devastation into defiance, make one thing clear from the teachers of TikTok: it doesn’t matter if you’re a school shooter or an ICE agent, if you’re coming for their kids, you’re going to have to get past them.
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“Me performing my active shooter duties if random men with weapons come to pick one of my kids up,” reads the text on one TikTok video as the teacher shuts their door, pulls the shades down, and barricades a desk against the door. And the videos suggest preparations past those teachers have become familiar with from mass shooting threats. “As a public school teacher, I have no idea where they are. I don’t recall their names. I have no idea what country they’re from,” says a teacher in a video viewed over 1.1 million times. “Do not say anything to these motherfuckers.
Sarah decided to post about it after one of her high school students asked her directly: What would she do if ICE tried to enter her classroom? “I told him that I am going to protect my students first and foremost,” Sarah says. She’s thought through the possibilities: Maybe she’ll be able to lock the door in time to keep an agent out. If a student is taken from her classroom, she’ll find another way to help. “I have talked to my husband and I know that the ramifications could be me ending up in jail if I tried to interfere, but I would be willing to make that sacrifice for my students.” It’s not what Sarah had in mind when she was a college student studying education and dreaming of being a teacher, but the looming threat of mass shootings has prepared her. She wants her students to know she will always protect them, no matter what the threat at her classroom doorway is.
Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, says that the idea behind the ‘sensitive locations’ protections was that hospitals, churches, and schools were community locations that should benefit everyone. By protecting those spaces, parents were able to take their kids to school or to seek medical care without worrying about immigration raids or arrests. Aber says that despite the change, there are still constitutional protections in place. “A judicial warrant is still necessary to enter a school unless the administration doesn’t ask for a judicial warrant and just permits ICE to enter,” Aber says. If an ICE agent does have a warrant for a particular child and a teacher attempts to stop them, that action could be seen as obstruction of justice, though Aber notes that it’s rare for ICE agents to be looking for a particular person, instead focusing on what are called ‘collateral arrests’ in the sweeps they conduct. And teachers have the right to remain silent in the face of questioning, even from ICE agents. As a parent of elementary-school kids herself, Aber worries about children being afraid to attend school for fear of their immigration status being questioned. “That has a really terrible impact on our ability to protect the well-being of all children. There’s a lot of fear out there.”
Layla, an elementary school teacher in Georgia whose name has been changed for her classroom’s safety, finds that fear unacceptable. “I’m not going to allow anybody to put fear in my children. I’m not going to let them be afraid to come to school. And if anything takes place, I’m putting myself on the front line before my children.” If an ICE agent were to come and take one of her children out of her class, Layla’s plan is to go with them. She’s even begun having conversations with parents to offer as much reassurance as she can. “I try to tell them, ‘I know it’s a lot going on. I don’t know how that feels because I’m not in your position, but I need you to be secure, as secure as you can be, that I’m going to everything I can to make sure your child feels like they’re safe’.”
Not every video details preparation — some are just an outpouring of emotion as teachers struggle with this new reality. In a video viewed over 5.5 million times, a teacher in Mississippi cries, wiping the tears that are streaming down her face, as she describes some of her students already missing school in anticipation of possible raids. “Those are not just my students,” she says, eyes red. “Those are my babies. I just don’t understand. So are they supposed to just hide and not get an education anymore? I don’t know where they are and in my mind, I’m like, are they scared? Are they alone? Are they with their parents? What happened to their parents? Did their parents get taken away?”
In Oklahoma, Allie, an elementary school teacher whose has been changed for her safety, made a video comparing the preparations for ICE to those of active shooter drills. There hasn’t been guidance from her school district on how to handle the threat so she’s had to default to what she knows about protecting her children from someone trying to enter their classroom. “I just thought that if intruder drills are taught for the safety of our students against someone who would want to harm them, then it’s the same thing,” she says. “It’s a no brainer for me. Protect my students at all costs. Foreign or domestic.”
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