Since the beginning of 2025, educators like Melissa Nathan have watched with growing anxiety as nonlocal law enforcement has escalated its arrests and detention of undocumented immigrants.

“There’s a lot to fear in this political climate,” said Nathan, the UFT chapter leader and a humanities teacher at East Side MS in Manhattan.

That unease is what motivated Nathan and about 300 UFT members from schools across the city to attend one of the immigrant rights workshops the union held at schools and union borough offices in October and November. The sessions walked members through the steps to establish school-based committees to support and defend immigrant families. See resources for immigrant students and families »

“Educators protect their students,” explained Katherine Kurjakovic, the UFT English language learner specialist who facilitated all the workshops. “Protection has taken on a new, frightening meaning — but we are not alone.”

After attending the workshop in Manhattan on Nov. 12, Nathan left feeling “empowerment,” not “fear and dread,” she said. “It’s nice to know you have the power to do something.”

Participants discussed actions including distributing know-your-rights handouts in multiple languages, updating emergency contact forms in case a parent or guardian is detained and connecting families with legal resources, including representation for immigration hearings. Members also talked about explaining to families that nonlocal law enforcement, including ICE, is not permitted in schools and that all children are entitled to enroll in school regardless of immigration status.

“All our students, regardless of their backgrounds, have a right to education,” said Amanda McCullough, the UFT chapter leader and an ENL teacher at PS 89 in Brooklyn, who attended a Brooklyn workshop on Oct. 29.

When President Donald Trump took office in January, McCullough said some families withdrew their children from PS 89, a majority Latino school, out of fear. The school’s committee to defend immigrant families, which she said is still in its early stages, is working on distributing know-your-rights cards in English and Spanish and booking a know-your-rights training session with a partner organization.

“At our meetings in the beginning, we didn’t know where to start,” she said. “Now we have much more concrete ideas.”

The union’s initiative to build school-based committees grew out of a resolution the UFT Delegate Assembly passed in June 2025. Yari Michel, a UFT delegate at Franklin Delano Roosevelt HS in Brooklyn, introduced the measure after her school formed its own committee in November 2024.

“It became very clear that the kind of work we were doing in our school, others also wanted to do,” said Michel.

Students at Franklin Delano Roosevelt HS are already feeling the effects of their educators’ leadership on the issue. “We’re seeing students become more open and trusting of the adults in the building,” said Michel.

Michel and her colleagues are heartened by the shift and eager to encourage more schools to follow their lead.

“It’s so important for us to protect immigrants in our schools because we are the front line of defense,” she said. “We are not going to let them take our kids.”