Note: Since this video was first published, a federal judge on Jan. 31 ordered the release of Liam Ramos and his father from immigration custody. However, hundreds of children are still detained in Dilley, Texas, where Liam and his father were recently held.
“Dear ICE: Letters From Students Living in Fear” is a four-minute New York Times Opinion video featuring students from an elementary school near Minneapolis who wrote letters to the ICE agents who have been detaining their friends and families. Here is how the Opinion section introduces the video:
“You are scaring schools, people and the world,” one student at Valley View Elementary, just outside Minneapolis, wrote to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Exactly a year after President Trump’s second inauguration, ICE agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old prekindergartner at Valley View. In and around Minneapolis, a city under siege by federal immigration authorities, scores of students are staying home out of fear of being abducted or have had family members who have been taken. As supplies for families too scared to leave their homes line the hallways of the school, immigration patrols rove outside and Liam languishes in a detention camp more than a thousand miles away, students have written letters to ICE agents. For the video above, Times Opinion asked some of them if they were willing to share their writing. “I think you should make friends with the world. Love, a Valley View student,” one child concluded.
Watch the film, and then tell us what you think in the comments:
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What moments in this film stood out for you — and why?
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What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from it?
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If you were to write a letter to ICE, what would you say?
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What would you want to tell or ask Liam — or to other children being held in immigration detention centers — if you could?
To learn more about how the immigration crackdown is affecting children in Minneapolis, read this article.
Want more student-friendly videos and podcasts? Visit our Film and Podcast Club column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
The post Film Club: ‘Dear ICE: Letters From Students Living in Fear’ appeared first on New York Times.
