Baltimore City school teacher Natalie Baeva delivered this testimony at a People’s Power Assembly rally demanding ICE out of the community. Struggle – La Lucha is reprinting it to build support for the May Day: No Work, No School, No Shopping actions.
Hi, my name is Natalie Baeva. I am an ESOL teacher in Highlandtown, East Baltimore, and a proud member of the Baltimore Teachers Union. I’m here today to speak against the ICE terror that Baltimore City and the United States allow to happen every day.
I teach at an elementary/middle school with a predominantly Latine student population. I work directly with kindergartners through third graders. Most of my students are multilingual learners, just as I was when my parents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia 25 years ago.
My students are smart, funny, sweet, kind and very sassy. They are multicultural and learn in two languages at the same time. They are improving their test scores. They are becoming better friends and better peers by going to school and interacting with others. My students teach me so much. They truly are the bright light of the next generation.
Since the beginning of the Trump administration, my students have been shaken into fear after watching their friends, family and neighbors be kidnapped by masked men with guns and taken from their communities.
Attendance has been declining every day. Parents are terrified to take their children to school. Parents are seeking advice on homeschooling because of ICE tactics — abducting children and using them as hostages and bait to kidnap parents as well. I’ve heard stories of people who haven’t left their houses in a year out of fear of being grabbed.
Recently, a 5-year-old boy named Liam Conejo Ramos was abducted by ICE and used as bait for his father to come out of their home. Liam and his father have both been seized and sent to Texas, far from their home in Minnesota. ICE will stop at nothing — not even murder — to tear apart families. They are a monstrous plague.
As people go hungry and homeless across the city and across the country, the ICE budget keeps growing. Schools in Baltimore are understaffed and underfunded. Employees struggle with wages that don’t meet the cost of living, while ICE agents earn six-figure salaries, destroying futures. The system has made its priorities clear: destruction over progress, fear over families, profits over people.
We must organize, speak out and do whatever is necessary to fight back against these agents of white supremacy who continue to destroy our communities.
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