1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

I am writing to demand an explanation for why you continue to allow federal immigration agents to abduct children off the street and out of schools without meaningful oversight, accountability, or restraint. Your silence and inaction make you complicit in conduct that is morally indefensible and constitutionally suspect. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have detained children as young as five years old during enforcement operations carried out in residential neighborhoods and near schools. In one documented case, a five-year-old child with a pending asylum claim was taken into federal custody shortly after returning home from preschool. There was no deportation order. School officials pleaded for the child to be released to a caregiver. ICE refused and transported the child hundreds of miles away to a detention facility. Multiple other students in the same school district — including minors — were taken into custody in similar operations. This is not “law enforcement.” It is state-sanctioned terror inflicted on children. Children are being used as leverage, collateral damage, and instruments of fear. Families are being torn apart in public view. Schools — places that should be safe, neutral, and protected — are being transformed into hunting grounds for federal agents. These actions undermine trust in educators, traumatize entire communities, and violate the most basic standards of human decency. Congress has the authority — and the obligation — to stop this. You have the power to demand documents, hold hearings, restrict funding, and impose clear limits on enforcement practices. Yet you have chosen to do none of those things. Instead, you have ceded your constitutional oversight role and allowed an unaccountable enforcement agency to operate without meaningful restraint. Do you believe it is acceptable for armed federal agents to detain children with no criminal record? Do you believe schools should be treated as enforcement zones? Do you believe a five-year-old belongs in immigration detention? If not, then why have you done nothing? Your oath was to the Constitution, not to an agency, not to a political party, and not to cruelty masquerading as policy. History will not look kindly on those who looked away while children were dragged into detention and called it governance. I expect a clear response explaining what you are doing — immediately — to stop these practices, protect children, and reassert Congress’s authority over federal law enforcement agencies. Continued silence will be taken for what it is: consent.