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“我是他在美国认识的最后一个人”：教师面临驱逐打击，学生被带走
作者：[Sunlen Serfaty]
52分钟前发布
2026年3月6日，美国东部时间上午6:00
学生生活、移民、工会
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（美国教师联合会工会视频截图中显示的克里斯滕·舍特尔）
美国教师联合会（AFT）
在过去一年中，克里斯滕·舍特尔（Kristen Schoettle）有四名学生被美国移民和海关执法局（ICE）拘留，并被从底特律带往约1500英里外的得克萨斯州迪利家庭拘留中心。
“对我个人来说，最令人心碎的时刻是第一次发生这种事的时候，”她说，回忆起去年5月一次学校实地考察期间，她亲眼目睹一名学生被移民局人员戴着手铐带走的情景。
接下来的几次，舍特尔知道该联系哪些律师、向谁报告以及采取哪些步骤。她与家长合作，查找出生日期、寻找国外联系人，并了解移民拘留中的法庭程序。
在学生被拘留期间，舍特尔成为这些青少年在外界可以信任的主要成年人之一，她每天与他们交谈，在他们经历监禁的日子里，实际上扮演了心理治疗师、法律顾问和朋友的角色。
“这不仅仅关乎课堂、课程和管理，”舍特尔说，“这太重要了。这远远超出了教育和教学过去的范畴。”
作为一名英语作为第二语言（ESL）教师，舍特尔近距离目睹了唐纳德·特朗普总统的移民打击行动如何影响弱势学生。
美国教师联合会主席兰迪·魏因加滕（Randi Weingarten）告诉CNN，她并非个例。全国各地许多教师发现自己承担了远超学校范围的角色，以支持面临移民挑战的学生（无论是否为无证移民）。
“数千名教师感到恐惧、愤怒，并为他们的学生担忧，”她说，“教师关心他们的学生和学生的家庭，无论他们对移民问题持何种立场，无论他们是否投票支持特朗普。”
本月，舍特尔最后一名仍被拘留的学生——一名来自委内瑞拉的17岁寻求庇护者——获释。
（舍特尔（中）与17岁学生安东尼（左二）及其家人合影，安东尼曾被ICE逮捕后遣返）
玛丽埃利·索萨（Maryeli Sosa）
他们的团聚喜忧参半。舍特尔说，尽管他和另外两名同样寻求庇护的学生已回到底特律家中，但她在5月目睹被带走的学生已与其家人一起被驱逐出境。
“想到在他离开前，我是他在美国认识的最后一个人，这太令人难以置信了，”她说。
“我希望能给你带来好消息”
每当她的手机响起区号为866的来电时，舍特尔就知道来电者是谁：她的一名学生从迪利打来电话。
舍特尔自掏腰包为被拘留的学生购买通话时长和网络访问权限。他们有时会使用学校常用的视频会议工具微软Teams给她发短信。
他们的对话和信息（主要用西班牙语）中，透露出拘留生活的希望、恐惧和细节，部分内容已提供给CNN。
“我害怕自己无法回去，老师，”一名学生在12月给她写信。“我很伤心……我不想留在这里。”
“说实话，今天我有点难过。我想念你们所有人，”另一名学生说。“有人在帮助我们吗？我们想离开这里，老师。”
通常，孩子们寻求实际指导。对话围绕他们接下来可能面临的情况展开，学生们指望她给出答案。
“我希望能给你带来好消息！”舍特尔回复一名询问情况的学生，“我爱你们，我们仍在努力解决问题。我仍然抱有希望，但我们需要在2月开庭前有所行动。”
在此期间，舍特尔努力联系任何能提供帮助的人——律师、国会议员或移民权益倡导者。她甚至表示，如果有必要，她愿意作为一名学生的担保人，使其在不与被拘留的父母同在的情况下获释。
一些信息描述了拘留中心的日常节奏和生活：早餐在上午7点，晚餐在下午5点。有时会有美术课或看医生的安排。
有时，学生们写信给舍特尔，表达他们的感受以及多么渴望离开。
在电话中，他们向舍特尔转述“食物不好吃，有时里面有虫子或霉菌，水很难喝没人喝，小卖部的东西太贵，环境恶劣”，她说。他们告诉她，人们经常生病。
当被问及这些情况时，该设施（也称为迪利移民处理中心）向CNN援引其此前的评论称，该中心“每天都在努力确保其照管的家庭安全、健康和幸福”。
有一次，两名学生在拘留中心偶遇，直到那一刻才意识到两人都被拘留了。
舍特尔说，其中一人看到另一人时“震惊得说不出话来”。
“这让我印象深刻，”舍特尔说，“因为他们本应每天在学校相聚、见面，而现在却在全国各地的监狱里重逢。”
教室里的空座位
舍特尔教室里的空椅子对留在学校的学生来说，成为令人不安的象征——所有这些学生都是近年来才来到美国并在底特律定居的。
西底特律高中（Western International High School）服务于一个约有1900名学生的多元化社区，其中约五分之一是移民，还有更多学生（约70%）是移民子女。
（美国教师联合会工会视频截图中的西底特律高中）
美国教师联合会（AFT）
在学生离开期间，“每个人——包括我自己——都不得不面对一种沉重感，每天都要思考这个问题，”舍特尔说。“他们仍在我的花名册上，我仍在标记他们缺席，但他们却不在那里。”
舍特尔说，剩下的学生担心“下一个可能就是自己”。
“我会指导他们需要知道什么：如何保护自己？例如，不应该去哪些地方？哪些地方可能更危险？如何安全驾驶？”
但舍特尔说，许多学生已经不来上学了，有些人要求转学到虚拟学校，或者要求通过微软Teams接受家庭作业辅导。她估计本学年有20%的学生因害怕被拘留而缺课。
“我的教室过去曾是充满欢乐、学习英语和彼此相处的地方，但现在肯定变成了一个充满恐惧的地方，”她说。
“我不想让他们感到孤独”
舍特尔认为情况不会很快改变。“由于我们城市乃至全国仍存在的持续威胁，恐惧依然挥之不去，”她说。
上周，她带领学生在学校举行罢课，抗议ICE在社区中的 Tactics。
“这不正常，”她对聚集在学校前的学生们说，“我们的社区正遭受恐怖袭击，我们受够了。”
舍特尔和其他教师、家长及社区成员一直与学校董事会合作，为学生提供支持，如更安全的交通选择，并开展“了解你的权利”培训，帮助人们了解如果被美国移民和海关执法局拦截，他们有哪些权利。
美国教师联合会主席魏因加滕表示，这种情况在全国范围内都在发生。在收到会员反馈后，该国最大的教师工会已开始举办网络研讨会培训，帮助教育工作者应对当前局势。他们还提供带有哨子的应急包，并分发“了解你的权利”资料。
对舍特尔来说，“这一切都是为了让我们的孩子离开ICE拘留中心，与家长沟通，与律师交流，了解法律体系。”
“我想让他们知道，有人希望他们出来，有人在为他们抗争，而且人们会继续为他们抗争，”她说，“我不想让他们感到孤独。”
学生生活、移民、工会
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“I was the last person in the US that he knew”: Teachers face the deportation crackdown taking students away | CNN Politics
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“I was the last person in the US that he knew”: Teachers face the deportation crackdown taking students away
By
[Sunlen Serfaty]
52 min ago
PUBLISHED Mar 6, 2026, 6:00 AM ET
Student life Immigration Labor unions
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Kristen Schoettle, seen in this screengrab of a video by the American Federation of Teachers union.
AFT
Over the last year, four of Kristen Schoettle’s students have been detained by ICE and taken roughly 1,500 miles from Detroit to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
“The most emotional moment for me personally is the first time it happened,” she said, recalling how she witnessed one student being taken away in handcuffs by immigration agents while their class was on a school field trip last May.
The next few times, Schoettle knew which lawyers to call, whom to inform and which steps to take. She has worked with families to track down birthdates, hunt for contacts in foreign countries and learn about court proceedings in immigration detention.
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And while her students were detained, Schoettle became one of the primary adults that the teens could trust on the outside world and spoke to them daily, becoming de facto therapist, legal adviser, and friend to her students as they navigated their time behind bars.
“It’s been about a lot more than just the classroom and the curriculum and the management,” Schoettle said. “It’s been huge. It’s way bigger than what education and teaching used to look like.”
As an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, Schoettle has seen up close how President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has impacted vulnerable students.
And she is not alone. Many teachers across the country are finding themselves taking on roles far beyond the bounds of school to support students, undocumented or otherwise, facing immigration challenges, Randi Weingarten,president of the American Federation of Teachers union, told CNN.
“Thousands are fearful and are outraged by what’s going on and scared for their students,” she said. “Teachers care about their students and their students’ families and they are really regardless of what their position is on immigration, regardless of whether they voted for Trump or didn’t.”
This month, the last of Schoeffle’s students to still be in detention, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was released.
Kristen Schoettle (center) poses with Antony (second left), a 17-year-old student who was arrested by ICE and later returned, and his family.
Maryeli Sosa
Their reunion was bittersweet. Although he and two others who are also seeking asylum have returned home to Detroit , Schoeffle said, the student she witnessed being taken away in May was deported with his family.
“It’s crazy to think that I was the last person in the US that he knew, to see him before he left,” she said.
“I wish I had news for you”
Whenever her cell phone rang with a call from the area code 866, Schoettle knew exactly who would be on the line: One of her students was calling from Dilley.
With her own money, Schoettle bought credits for her students in detention so they could make phone calls and access the internet. They sometimes texted her using the video conferencing tool – Microsoft Teams – that their school uses.
Hopes, fears and details of lives in detention are revealed in their conversations and messages, mostly in Spanish, some of which were shared with CNN.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to return, miss,” one student wrote to her in December. “I’m sad…. I don’t want to be here,” they said.
“ I’m not going to lie. Today I am a little sad. I miss all of you,” said another. “Are there people trying to help us? We want to get out of here, teacher.”
Often, the children were looking for practical guidance. The conversations centered around what could come next for them, and the students looked to her for answers.
“I wish I had news for you!” Schoettle replied to one of the students who was checking in. “I love you and we are still trying to make something happen. I still have hope, but we need something to happen before your court date in February.”
Kristen Schoettle, seen in this screengrab of a video by the American Federation of Teachers union.
AFT
During that time, Schoettle was working to reach anyone who could help — lawyers, members of Congress or immigration advocates. She even said she would serve as a sponsor for one of the students to be released without their parent, with whom they were detained, if necessary.
Some messages describe the daily rhythms and routine of detention. Meals were at set times:breakfast at 7am, dinner at 5pm. Sometimes, there would be an art class to attend or a doctor’s appointment to go to.
At other times, the students, who Schoettle wrote to her just to express how they felt — and how badly they wanted out.
On the phone, they relayed to Schoettle “how the food isn’t good, how sometimes it’s maybe there’s bugs in it, maybe there’s mold on it, how the water is disgusting and people don’t drink it, how everything in the commissary is too expensive, how the conditions are bad,” she said. People got sick all the time, they told her.
Asked about these conditions, the facility, which is also known as Dilley Immigration Processing Center, referred CNN to a previous comment stating in part that it “work(s) every day to ensure the families in their care are safe, healthy and well.”
At one point, two of her students bumped into each other, not realizing until the moment that they had both been detained.
One was so shocked to see the other “she couldn’t even speak,” she told Schoettle.
“That sticks with me,” Schoettle said, “because the place that they should be together, seeing each other, is every day at school. But instead, they’re seeing each other in prison across the country.”
Empty seats in the classroom
The empty chairs in Schoettle’s classroom became unsettling symbols to the students that remained, all of whom had only arrived in the US in recent years and settled in Detroit.
Western International High School serves a diverse community of about 1,900 students; about one-fifth are immigrants, and many more — about 70% — are children of immigrants.
Western International High School in Detroit, seen in this screengrab of a video by the American Federation of Teachers union.
AFT
While her students were gone, there was“a heaviness that everyone, myself included, had to reckon with and had to think about every day,” Schoettle said. “They’re still on my roster. I’m still marking them absent,” and yet, “they’re not here.”
Her remaining students feared that “they could be next,” Schoettle said.
“I walk them through what they need to know. How can they protect themselves? Where shouldn’t they go, for example? What places are more, maybe, dangerous than others? How can you drive safely?”
But many have stopped coming to school, Schoettle said, and some have been asking to transfer to a virtual school or asking for teachers for schoolwork on Microsoft Teams. She estimates that 20% of her students this academic year have missed school out of fear for being detained.
“My classroom used to once be a place of joy and learning English and being with each other, but it’s definitely become more of a place of fear,” she said.
“I don’t want them to feel alone”
Schoettle doesn’t see things changing anytime soon.“With the constant threat that still exists in our city and throughout the country, there’s still the constant fear,” she said.
Last week, she led students in a walkout during school to protest ICE’s tactics in their community.
“This is not normal,” she said to the crowd of students gathered in front of their school. “This is our community being terrorized, and we are tired of it.”
Schoettle and other teachers, parents and community members have been working with the school board to provide support for students, such as safer transportation options and conducting “Know Your Rights” trainings to help people understand what rights they have if they are stopped by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That’s happening across the country, said Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president. After hearing from members, the teachers’ union – the country’s largest – has started webinar trainings to help educators respond to the moment. They are also providing emergency kits with whistles and distributing “Know Your Rights” literature.
For Schoettle, “it’s been about trying to get our kids out of ICE detention. It’s been about talking to parents, talking to lawyers, understanding the legal system.”
“I want them to know that people want them out. People are fighting for them, and people are going to continue to fight for them,” she said. “I don’t want them to feel alone.”
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