Bring Liam Closer: Reflecting on Teaching in Treacherous Times

I want to talk about Liam Ramos.

As this new year began, I felt the familiar impulse to write something declarative about January, transitions, and thresholds. I even drafted a piece invoking Janus, the Roman god of doorways and beginnings, thinking about time, renewal, and symbolic fresh starts. But I left it untouched. The metaphor felt thin compared to what has been unfolding in real time around us. Because the story that feels most urgent right now is not symbolic. It is rooted in policy, power, fear, and the lived reality of families and children navigating an increasingly precarious sociopolitical climate.

Liam Ramos is five years old. A child in Minnesota. A little boy with a Spider-Man backpack and a blue hat with floppy ears. In images that have circulated widely, he looks confused and frightened as adults grip his jacket and his belongings. He was detained by ICE in an attempt to draw his mother out of their home — a child used as leverage, a family placed in terror, a moment that could have ended in ways we do not even want to imagine.

And while Liam’s story has become one of the most visible recent examples, he is not the first child to be caught in the crosshairs of immigration enforcement, nor is this the first time school communities and educators have had to grapple with the fallout of these policies.

Long before Liam’s name reached national headlines, schools across the country had already been confronting the realities of ICE activity, family separation, and the fear that ripples through classrooms when a child disappears, a parent is detained, or a family is forced into sudden uncertainty.

That truth was underscored for me during a virtual panel hosted late last year by Teachers College’s Black Education  Research Center. A superintendent from Vermont shared a story that has stayed with me: following a holiday weekend, his district noticed that a young elementary-aged student had not returned to school. Because they already had systems in place to check on families — structures rooted in care, responsibility, and a commitment to students’ well-being — staff reached out to the child’s father. It was through that outreach that they learned the child and his mother had been apprehended by ICE and relocated out of state, reportedly to Texas.

What struck me was not only the tragedy of the situation, but the fact that the district’s response was possible because they had already built a culture and infrastructure of attentiveness. They were not reacting in panic; they were operating from a framework of ongoing care. Even in a moment of harm, their systems existed because someone had already decided that children’s safety, attendance, and family connection mattered enough to monitor closely.

Liam’s story, then, is not an anomaly. It is part of a longer continuum — one that educators, school leaders, counselors, and community advocates have been navigating for years, often quietly, often without national attention, and often while trying to preserve a sense of stability for children whose lives feel anything but stable.

I have also been thinking about how Black women activists Brittany Packnett Cunningham and Omisade Burney-Scott bore witness to Liam’s story in ways that felt deeply human and morally grounded. Brittany spoke tearfully, calling Liam “ours,” reminding us that he is not just another headline or someone else’s child, but part of a collective moral responsibility. She spoke as a mother, as a Black woman, and as someone reckoning with what it means to raise children in a country that promises safety while repeatedly exposing families to harm.

Omisade reflected on a moment from her own motherhood, recalling a time when her young son went missing for just an hour. She described the panic, the urgency, and the way family and community mobilized to bring him home. In sharing that memory, she invited us to imagine what Liam’s mother must be enduring now — what it means to have a child separated from safety, familiarity, and home.

What both women model is a form of activism grounded in moral proximity. They refuse to let Liam remain distant or abstract. They bring him closer to their hearts, and in doing so, they bring him closer to ours.

My own way of processing this is through the heart of a teacher. I taught for more than two decades. Most of my students were middle and high schoolers, but if you are an educator, children are never theoretical. Their safety, their emotional lives, their dignity, and their futures stay with you. You carry them long after the bell rings.

So when I think about Liam, I also think about his classmates or his siblings. If he is in pre-K, or kindergarten, what are the other children wondering? How do young people make sense of a friend who suddenly disappears? What questions follow them home? What fears quietly settle into their bodies?

I think, too, about the educators and school communities who are being asked to hold space for children living in a climate of uncertainty — people who are still teaching, still showing up, still offering steadiness even as the ground beneath them feels increasingly unstable.

I live in New York City, where ICE activity is not an abstraction. It unfolds across Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island, and beyond. The fear is real. The anxiety is real. Families are trying to survive not only the emotional weight of this moment, but the daily realities of rent, food, caregiving, and work. Like many others, I find myself balancing layered responsibilities, part of a generation caring for both elders and community while trying to stay grounded in purpose and care.

And still, the heart of a teacher remains central to how I make sense of this moment.

For years, even as children and families have been living with the real consequences of immigration enforcement and systemic harm, many of the public conversations have focused more on political battles than on the actual lives and safety of young people. Young people who cannot sign legal documents, who cannot represent themselves in court, who are still learning to write their names, are being caught in systems of power far beyond their comprehension.

In Minneapolis, children have reportedly been told to stay home because stepping outside could carry unfathomable consequences. Similar fears echo in Vermont, Texas, New York, and beyond. These stories are not rare. They are becoming more visible, more frequent, and more normalized — and that should deeply trouble all of us.

Which brings me back to these questions to: how do we continue to show up for children with honesty, compassion, and steadiness in a time like this? How do educators regulate their own emotions so they can remain grounded for students? What is in our collective “go-bag” when fear, grief, and uncertainty arrive at the schoolhouse door?

We are being told to stay alert, to prepare for emergencies, to have a plan. I believe we also need emotional, ethical, and communal readiness. A plan for how we hold children with love when the world feels unstable. A plan for how schools, faith communities, neighborhoods, and local governments protect families when harm is not theoretical, but present.

Minnesota is not “somewhere else.” Vermont is not distant. Texas is not far away. These realities are unfolding in our shared national backyard.

I offer this invitation, especially to educators, counselors, school leaders, and anyone entrusted with the care of young people: What is our strategy for care? How are we staying resourced? How are we protecting our tenderness, our clarity, and our courage?

Because children like Liam deserve more than our outrage.
They deserve our preparedness.
Our solidarity.
Our love.