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We Are Growing Up Afraid
Growing up should feel safe. It should sound like laughter, footsteps running to soccer practice, kids arguing over homework, parents calling us in for dinner. That is what childhood is supposed to be.

That is not what this feels like.

I am a minor. I am a first-year high school student. I should be worried about grades, friends, or whether I’ll make the team. Instead, my friends and I live with a quiet, constant fear. We hesitate before stepping outside. We scan the street before walking to school. We wonder, every single day, if today will be the day someone we love disappears.

My best friend’s mother was detained by ICE. She has no criminal record. She is home now—but the damage is already done. She missed her son’s first Valentine’s Day. She missed his first French class. She missed moments that will never come back. Her child had to learn, far too early, that love and safety are not guaranteed.

My friends are afraid to play soccer outside. Younger siblings don’t understand why they suddenly aren’t allowed to play in the street anymore. They don’t understand immigration law. They don’t understand enforcement policy. They only understand fear. They only know their parents look scared.

These are not criminals. These are families. These are parents who work, care for their children, and belong here as much as anyone else. They are woven into our schools, our neighborhoods, our lives. When they are targeted, it doesn’t just hurt them—it tears holes through entire communities.

I’ve seen my friends flinch at sirens. I’ve seen their faces change when a patrol car drives by. That kind of fear doesn’t fade when the car passes. It stays. It settles into your body. It follows you into classrooms, onto soccer fields, into sleep.

Studies show that under the Trump administration, immigrants without criminal records have been detained at higher rates than those with criminal histories. This is not about safety. This is about force. And force aimed at families does not make a country strong—it makes it cruel.

Research from the American Immigration Council shows that aggressive ICE tactics create communities of fear, not cooperation. When people are terrified, they don’t call for help. They don’t report crimes. They don’t trust anyone. Fear isolates people—and isolation is dangerous.

There have been moments that still don’t feel real. ICE used gas in residential areas. A mother driving home with her children was exposed to so much gas that she had to perform CPR on her infant. Children have cried as their fathers were taken away. These are images that stay with you. These are memories kids should never carry.

We are America. We have the resources. We have the power. We have the choice. And yet we keep choosing fear.

We are asking for that choice to change.

We call for an end to ICE’s presence in residential neighborhoods and for a shift toward community-based approaches that protect families instead of traumatizing children. Policies like Trust Acts have already shown that safety comes from trust, not terror.

This is not politics to us. This is our childhood. This is our sense of safety. This is our future.

Please listen to us. Protect our families. Let kids be kids again. Let growing up in America mean hope—not fear. These people came here for justice for peace, not for hate. We have the power to see whos criminal and who is not.

It is a shame that someone as young as me, has to speak out against this crime against humanity, and it makes me sick to my stomach that we arent doing anything, and watching babies being pulled from their parents. We are the united states, I pledged and still do every morning to school, because I believe in freedom. When I pledge now, I feel  that I am an american an immigrant myself, my great grandma wasnt american she was German. We are shoving people to a country where they can die. My grandparents on my fathers side came here because Italy was not good for them, they needed life beyond the 1900s poverty, when they came they were awed by the amount of freedom we had.

And yet, now we are putting our immigrants through trauma unneeded and for what? 

This Is How We Bring Back “United” in the United States
Picture a mother holding her baby as floodwaters rise around them—disaster made worse by inaction. Picture a child ripped from his father at the border, wrapped in a foil blanket, whispering for his mamá in the dark. Picture a journalist branded an “enemy” for telling the truth. These are not statistics. They are families, futures, and lives fractured by cruelty. When one of us is wounded, the pain cuts through all of us—because we are bound together.

What’s at stake is everything. If nothing changes, towns will burn, coastlines will disappear, children will grow up haunted by cages and separations, and democracy itself will suffocate under fear and silence. But if we choose courage—mercy over cruelty, truth over lies—we can repair what has been torn apart. We can keep families together, protect our planet, and pass on a future worth living in.

The time to act is now. The damage is already happening. Every delay deepens the harm. Justice ignored today becomes justice buried tomorrow. History will not forgive silence—but it will remember those who stood up in time.

This crisis touches all of us. It’s in the classrooms where children practice lockdown drills. In the homes refugees are forced to flee. In the staircases that shut disabled people out of opportunity. In the fields where workers bleed while executives profit. In hospital doors closed to sick children. Cruelty is not isolated—it is a web. And compassion is the thread that can unravel it.

That includes LGBTQ+ and trans lives. Teenagers wondering if they’re safe to exist. Trans kids denied healthcare. Young people hiding love out of fear. These are not “debates.” These are lives. Freedom that excludes some is not freedom at all.

America has the resources. America has the power. America has the choice. What we lack is the will to choose humanity. End ICE operations in residential neighborhoods
Keep families together—no separations
Stop detention of children
Guarantee dignity-based immigration policy
Protect journalists and free speech
Respect election results and voting rights
Prevent leaders from overturning votes
Enact real climate action now
Protect LGBTQ+ and trans youth
Guarantee access to trans healthcare
Protect reproductive freedom
Treat healthcare as a human right
Pay workers living wages
Protect disabled people’s access and rights
Restore compassion in government