Under two large rainbow umbrellas, Jesus Gonzalez stood in the same place he had always been, slicing mangoes, pineapple, watermelon, and coconut as the most loyal and beloved vendor in Echo Park, Los Angeles, according to NPR. He had worked there for two decades, but in early 2026, in the span of about 60 seconds, he was gone.
The word “alien” is a legal term. But it is also a deliberate choice in words. A choice that makes it easier to justify what we are seeing in the United States today. “Aliens” are not like us. “Aliens” do not have birthdays, children to care for, or people whose lives are impacted by their presence. Behind every deportation statistic is a name, a face, and a life.
Such is the case with Gonzalez. According to NPR, two black SUVs carrying masked border patrol agents chased him from under his umbrella, across the gas station, and handcuffed him between fuel pumps while he was still wearing his black apron before loading him into a vehicle. He was deported to Tijuana, Mexico, by the following morning. His fruit cart, still full of fresh cantaloupe and mangoes packed in ice, was left on the corner.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has acknowledged, according to CNN, that during their operations, other immigrants “may be picked up too.” The phrase “may be picked up too” is the government’s way of describing what happened to Jesus Gonzalez, Liam Conejo Ramo, and a 10-year-old girl on her way to her fourth-grade classroom.
For students watching these events unfold, the cases are difficult to ignore. “It is truly appalling to see what is being done to immigrants in this country,” said senior Abby Colbert. “ICE is effectively being used as the secret police for Donald Trump, and people are not upset enough.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, President Trump’s mass deportation campaign is described as a necessary operation that targets the “worst of the worst” and “violent criminals.“ However, the people it has taken away tell a very different story.
On a winter morning in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos came home from preschool in a small puffy coat and a blue knit bunny hat while carrying his Spider-Man backpack. According to NBC, ICE agents were waiting for him. A masked agent took the handle of his backpack and guided him into a vehicle. They transported him and his father over 1,300 miles to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.
Liam’s family had entered the United States legally and presented themselves to border officers in Texas in December 2024 to apply for asylum. According to OSV news, their attorney, Marc Prokosch, stated, “These are not illegal aliens. They were following all of the established protocols, pursuing their claim for asylum, showing up for their court hearings, and posed no safety risk, no flight risk, and never should’ve been detained.”
Liam’s father had no criminal record, not in Mexico or in Ecuador. According to CNN, three days after his arrest, Homeland Security had not identified any criminal history. He was a mason and a painter. His brother Lewis told CNN the family came through the United States because economic insecurity in Ecuador led them to want to find a good life somewhere else.
Liam is one of four children from Columbia Heights Public Schools taken by ICE in just two weeks, according to CNN. A 17-year-old was taken while on his way to school. A 10-year-old fourth grader was taken with her mother. Superintendent Zena Stenvik informed CNN that ICE agents had been following school buses. She stated that there was no semblance of normalcy anymore.
Yenna Yoo, a senior at Princess Anne High School, said the image of Conejo with his backpack and hat was what was the most unsettling for her. “It was seeing the picture of him with his little school backpack and his hat,” she said. “It just shows how this administration is just not seeing people as people, even little kids. What crimes is he committing?”
For Yoo, the defining failure is one of empathy. “I think empathy is the number one thing that brings communities and the world together, and I think we are really lacking empathy as a whole,” she said. “The Department of Homeland Security and this administration are just really dehumanizing people who are trying to come to America and live a better life and provide for themselves and their families.”
The impact of these raids reaches throughout the Hampton Roads community. Kimberly Discua Enanorado, a junior at Bayside High School and Virginia Beach Director of a local immigrant advocacy organization, said she has researched ICE detention conditions extensively while preparing for debates and organizing protests. “The treatment of immigrants in ICE detention, and the amount of people who have died or who have been severely injured or have been refused medical assistance, is nothing short of heartbreaking,” she said.
Kimberly described one case that stood out to her. Last year, a 23-year-old man died while trying to escape ICE agents in Norfolk. He was facing deportation to Honduras, a country Kimberly said is “run by gangs and incredibly dangerous.” “He ran because he was scared,” she said. “It was genuinely heartbreaking because not a lot of people knew about his story.”
If the arrests are disturbing, what follows may be worse. According to her official website, in January 2026, U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal traveled to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, to conduct a congressional oversight visit. She gave eight days’ notice to the facility. She brought privacy release forms for specific detained individuals and was still denied entry for hours.
When she was finally permitted to meet with one detainee, a man who is the sole caregiver for his eight-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, she described the visit as heartbreaking. According to Jayapal’s official statement, he had been hospitalized in the emergency room three times since being detained in early January and remained in unresolved pain.
Jayapal’s statement reports that attorneys were asked to wait four to five hours to see clients. There were only seven attorney rooms for around 1,300 detainees. Her statement included complaints of overcrowding and inadequate medical treatment. Around 70,000 people sleep inside ICE detention facilities across the country, 85% of whom have committed no crime.
The scope of the administration’s targeting has also expanded in recent months. Colbert noted that transgender individuals have begun to be identified as a new focus of ICE enforcement, under the claim that changing one’s gender on a visa application constitutes intentional misrepresentation to the government. “It is just another way that this administration is targeting individuals in this country as a way of controlling the population,” Colbert said. “This is extremely scary for me as a trans person in America.”
“Our country needs more voices,” Kimberly said. “People need to learn to speak up, because the only way we will be able to truly cause change is if we cause a disruption.” Colbert echoed that urgency, arguing that Congress has both the responsibility and the tools to act. “The country has ways of dealing with illegal actions like this, but no one in our government is doing anything to stop it,” she said. “Congress has to do something before more innocent people are imprisoned or killed.”
These are not statistics. The majority of these people are people who owned honest companies, raised families, showed up for court hearings, followed the law, and paid taxes. We can debate the logistics of immigration policy. We can disagree about how borders should work. But first, we need to confront our own humanity and be honest about what we are doing, to whom, and for what purpose.
