I am a 17-year-old junior at Columbia Heights High School in Minnesota. On a normal Tuesday, I should be nervous about my chemistry lab or the upcoming basketball game. Instead, I am writing this from a community that federal authorities have officially labeled a “city under siege.”
There is a specific kind of quiet that takes over a classroom when a desk stays empty for three days in a row. It isn’t the quiet of a student being out with the flu — it’s the heavy, vibrating silence of a student body that knows exactly where their classmate went but is too afraid to say it out loud. My superintendent recently confirmed that four students from our district have been detained by federal agents in just two weeks.
We aren’t just losing friends, we are losing the fundamental belief that school is a safe place to exist.
As students, we are taught that the Sensitive Locations policy — the federal memo that once kept enforcement away from schools and churches — is our shield. Yet as I drive around to the bus stop on my daily commute, I see that shield has been shattered. A press conference held by Commander Greg Bovino spoke of choices, suggesting the chaos is a result of the community’s refusal to comply. As a student, I find that logic terrifyingly narrow. Did 5-year-old Liam Ramos choose to be used as tactical bait? Reports indicate federal agents forced this preschooler to knock on his own front door to draw his family into an ambush. When Vice President JD Vance was asked about this, he offered a chilling dismissal. “What are they supposed to do?”
For us, the answer is simple, you are supposed to protect us. Unfortunately, the choices being made by the adults in power have transformed our daily commute into a tactical gauntlet. The killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse with the Minneapolis VA, has sent a shockwave through my generation. Alex was a healer and a citizen, yet he was tackled and killed by agents who refused to identify themselves. If a VA nurse isn’t safe on Nicollet Avenue, why should I feel safe walking around downtown?
From a psychological standpoint, what we are experiencing is a massive spike in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Psychologists have long warned that the threat of family separation causes chronic toxic stress that physically alters brain development. For my classmates, this isn’t a theory from a textbook. It’s the reason we can’t focus on our psychology homework.
We are being conditioned to view our government not as a protector, but as a predator.
Courtesy of Amanuel Asfaw
Amanuel Asfaw
The intellectual argument for this surge is often framed as a necessity for law and order. But when agents are caught on camera stating, “Legal or illegal, you’re getting deported,” the rule of law is actually being discarded. When the University of Minnesota’s Graduate Hotel becomes a barracks, the line between a center of learning and a military outpost vanishes. We are witnessing the dismantling of the American education system in real-time, replaced by a surveillance state where your student ID matters less than your perceived status.
We didn’t join the state-wide strike on Jan. 23 because we wanted a day off. We walked out because the educational contract has been shredded. You cannot expect a teenager to focus on a math test when their brain is constantly scanning for unmarked black SUVs. This is what the siege looks like for Gen Z: a constant, low-level vibration of fear that makes long-term planning feel like a luxury we can’t afford.
In journalism class, we talk about the watchdog role of the press. Right now, though, it feels like the watchdogs are being muzzled while the wolves are in the hallway. I am scared, but I am also paying attention.
We are learning a lesson that wasn’t in the syllabus: that our rights are fragile, and that safety
is often used as a justification for the very things that make us feel the most in danger.
To the readers of Youth Today, the educators and advocates who work with us every day, I ask you to look at the empty desks in your own rooms. Don’t just see a missing data point on an attendance sheet. See the student who is currently hiding in their basement, too afraid to come to school because they saw what happened to Alex Pretti. Ask yourselves if this is the order you want for the next generation of Americans. Because if the empty desks continue to multiply, we won’t just be losing students, we’ll be losing the future of our democracy.
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Amanuel Asfaw is a junior at Columbia Heights High School in Minnesota and a student journalist. Their reporting focuses on the intersection of federal policy and student civil liberties — as well as the 2026 Minneapolis siege from the perspective of the students and families living within the surge zone.
