Some say the Omaha ICE raid will have lasting impacts on children

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After dozens of people were detained in an ICE raid at an Omaha food processing facility, families are still recovering from the fear it instilled.

Parents and children alike are more hesitant to participate in summer educational activities which, according to one childcare provider, can have lasting impacts on their health and academics. The provider asked to remain anonymous out of concern for the safety of students with varying immigration statuses.

“But mostly how I'm seeing it impact the kids is they're not showing up for these fine summer learning opportunities or summer school. So they're going to be behind next year," the childcare provider said. "So if we don't see them, we don't know what their needs are, and we can't help.”

The childcare provider added her program, along with before and after school care as well as summer programming, also offers lunches - and with lower turnout, she isn’t sure how some students are meeting their nutritional needs. She said the day after the raid, "a bunch of" parents in the program signed up for an emergency planning session in case ICE activity affects their families in the future.

Nine of the program's families were directly impacted by the Omaha raid. In those cases, the program had emergency contacts they were able to reach out to for children to be picked up.

Ted Hamann, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln specializing in how school systems respond to transnational students, explained these sorts of events can have physical effects on children, such as fear, but also mental impacts.

"Kids just positionally after something like that, are in a different place. They're scared, they're angry, they're frightened," he said.

He added along with children directly related to the raid, the anxiety around ICE activity will trickle into the lives of other kids.

"The consequences aren't only for who are the kids sort of obviously and straightforwardly impacted, but in the climate of anxiety, the other kids get nervous too," he explained.

Hamann predicted that in August, fewer children will go to school out of fear of ICE activity. And he said schools need to be prepared for the ones who do return, predicting they will have more “mental health baggage.”

The childcare provider has the same concerns, and that children will have a harder time focusing in school with increased ICE activity.

"We're trying to get them to be engaged, but they're just so on high alert about what's going to happen with their parents," she said.

Although the raid happened last month, she said "I think we're really going to notice it here in a couple weeks, where because parents, people aren't leaving their homes anymore, people are missing work or quit their jobs for fear of this happening to them. So I feel like a lot of basic needs aren't going to be met within the next couple weeks."

Hamann cited a similar case in 2018 in O'Neill when there was an ICE raid when superintendents needed to respond to the widespread impacts that the students faced.

"You worry about not only what might happen to parents who are at work or parents who are at home, but you worry about what might happen at school to you or to classmates" he said. "That does not lend itself to a safe, thoughtful, engaged learning environment. Instead, everybody's sort of shell shocked and nervous."

Several of the cases are still being litigated, while one worker detained was reportedly let out on bail.