ICE Agents at the Daycare Door

On January 7, a teacher at a Minneapolis Spanish immersion daycare was pulled from her car by armed ICE agents in riot gear and balaclava masks. The Persistent reported she was legally in the U.S. on asylum from Mexico with a valid work permit inside the facility. Her two-year-old student's mother, a registered nurse, watched it happen from the parking lot.

The arrest fits a documented pattern. A PNAS study found the 2023–2025 enforcement surge pushed childcare employment from regulated centers into private households. Native-born workers did not replace immigrants. No Worker Left Behind confirmed the paid direct-care workforce — 4.6 million workers — is the single fastest-growing U.S. job category. Shrinking it through enforcement while demand accelerates is arithmetic that does not resolve.

In New York City, home care workers, labor unions, and disability activists are demanding the City Council reject Intro. 303, legislation they say threatens worker protections and disability services. The coalition represents organized resistance at the municipal level — a fight over whether the workforce that exists will be allowed to keep the protections it has. The care labor crisis is no longer just about who will do the work. It is about whether the people already doing it will be deported or deregulated out of the jobs.