For months now, the Trump administration has dispatched immigration enforcement agents to American cities.
President Trump says they're there to keep American citizens safe and to deport the "worst of the worst."
"They're apprehending murderers and drug dealers and a lot of bad people," the president said at a press conference in January.
But in the cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has surged — mostly Democratic-run cities — residents say that everything feels scarier.
Bystanders are capturing ICE arrests on film.
One such viral encounter: Aliya Rahman in Minneapolis.
"I am autistic and I have a brain injury. Put me down," Rahman screamed. "I was just trying to get to the doctor."
A video from Hyattsville, Md., shows a man pinned to the ground by two officers, pleading for help in English and Spanish.
Sometimes the encounters are fatal, as in the cases of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis — both American citizens killed by federal agents while out observing immigration enforcement actions.
Immigration agents are also detaining children, like five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was picked up in Minnesota, held at an ICE facility in Texas and released following a judge's order.
In March, an immigration judge ended the asylum claims of Conejo Ramos and his family, ordering their removal from the country.
"There's fear. There's palpable fear by students, and they know what's happening," said Jason Kuhlman, the principal of Valley View Elementary, the school Conejo Ramos attends. "We're having parents plucked up every day, sometimes multiple times a day, over a long period of time."
These detentions have left many parents and their kids worried about what should feel like a basic task: getting to school.
So educators are stepping in.
They're giving rides, delivering groceries and consoling distraught children.
And that's happening well beyond Minnesota.
Community efforts
"I have first graders coming to me, asking me if I know what ICE is and if I think they're going to come for their families," said Jaye Riche, a multilingual teacher in Lewiston, Maine. "They're scared that somebody would come and take their parents."
Rich told NPR that community organizers are working to make sure families and students are safe.
"We have walking groups up at the high school, we have folks giving rides," Rich said. "We have people making sure bus stops are safe."
Kuhlman and Rich spoke on the record, but that was rare.
Most people NPR interviewed were too scared to speak publicly because they worried it would make their school a target of the federal government.
Many of them described the community efforts to get kids to school safely, as some parents are too afraid to leave the house.
'Kidnapped off our street corners'
On a cold morning in Washington, D.C., a group of kids of all ages, a handful of adults and a dog were walking in the direction of a school.
"We call it the walking bus," a parent named Ashley said. "It looks like a school field trip, honestly."
Ashley, one of the organizers of the walking bus, asked NPR not to say where in the city this was taking place or which school was nearby. She doesn't want NPR to share her last name because she's afraid it will draw ICE's attention to the school.
"A few weeks before school started, we knew that our neighborhood would be a target based on who lives here," she said. "We were having people kidnapped off our street corners. A block from my house, in the morning, on the way to school, someone was taken out of a truck, disappeared 10 minutes later, gone. It was like they didn't exist. And that was happening in front of children."
The children walked by fliers taped on lamp posts that read "Stop ICE terror."
When federal agents first surged into the city, Ashley said volunteers thought they'd be doing the walking bus for a few weeks. But it's been almost six months.
"It feels quieter because it's not as visible on the streets, but it doesn't mean that people still aren't being taken," she said.
From Washington, they watched what happened in Minnesota.
"Our biggest fear… is what happens if we get stopped and we have kids in our care," Ashley said. "We were like, it's never going to happen, but we have to prepare if they're going to try and take a kid. They've taken kids … they crossed that line."
"Walk close to the volunteers"
Liliana has lived in Washington for six years and works at a daycare. She told NPR she's an asylum seeker. Two of her four kids participate in the walking bus.
"Once the president was elected, we started feeling scared. But also when ICE started being seen in D.C.," she said in Spanish.
The thing that scares her most?
"Being separated from my children."
She's told her kids not to talk about their legal status and to walk close to the volunteers with the walking bus.
S is so worried about being detained by ICE that she asked NPR to refer to her only by her first initial. She asked NPR not to identify her kids at all. Her 7-year-old son is part of the walking bus.
"She explained to me like, yeah, these people, they take me home, and then they bring me to school," he said.
His sister, 14, said she understands what's going on. "I get fear because like, what if I'm at school and my mom's outside and something happens to her," she whispered.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said, "ICE is not going to schools to arrest children — we are protecting children." The agency said it will not "tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trust them to use common sense."
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Julie Depenbrock and edited by Adam Bearne. The digital version was edited by Suzanne Nuyen. John F. Burnett provided Spanish interpretation.
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