Fear of ICE pushes Washington DC daycare workers into hiding

It’s about 10.30am, time to take the children out for a walk. The teachers settle the youngest into double strollers and take the older ones by the hand. Then they walk down the narrow, tree-lined street where Delia’s daycare operates, in a residential neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It won’t be a long outing. Since President Donald Trump stepped up his offensive against immigrants in the capital last year, the daycare workers — all vulnerable to deportation — avoid going very far. They used to take the children to the neighborhood public library, the capital’s free museums or the zoo. Now they have gone nearly a year without doing so.

The fear of being detained by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shapes their daily lives. Delia — the name was changed to protect her identity — has hardly left the house for months, watching out for WhatsApp alerts about immigration sweeps in the area. “We have examples from our own teachers: if two were walking together they would take one and leave the children with the other.”

Faced with that risk, she drew up “a plan” with the caregivers: the one who isn’t arrested must notify the children’s parents and contact her. She says she’s willing to risk the life she built over 20 years in the United States to protect her employees.

“I tell them: ‘If we’re found on the street and detained, don’t worry — I will turn myself in first.’”

The WhatsApp group that tracks ICE

At the start of his second term, Trump again targeted “sanctuary cities,” which limit cooperation with immigration authorities. Washington, D.C. was particularly exposed: unlike states, the district does not have the same protections over its autonomy. The net tightened around the capital in August last year, when the president deployed the National Guard, temporarily placed the local police under his command and declared a crime emergency, despite official data showing a decline in violent crime.

What followed was a wave of arrests that exceeded 1,500 detentions between August and November 2025, according to Relevant Research, a private firm led by Austin Kocher, an assistant professor at Syracuse University and an expert on the U.S. immigration system. A year earlier, in the same period under Democratic president Joe Biden, the figure had been seven arrests.

In December 2025, a judge limited warrantless arrests in Washington, and detentions in the capital fell. Even so, the strong federal presence keeps the immigrant community on edge. And the deployment will be reinforced this summer for the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, with measures that include doubling the number of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents, a division of ICE, according to Gadyaces Serralta, director of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Under this climate of harassment, immigrant workers like Delia — who provide an essential service for D.C. families — have been forced to operate in the shadows. As early as June last year, she removed the sign at her entrance that identified her business: “Hiding like this makes me feel bad. Telling my teachers: ‘Let’s put it away,’ as if we were criminals, when we are only educating children for this nation’s future.”

Two months later, María also removed the sign with her daycare’s name. Her center is a few blocks from Delia’s; years earlier Delia had given her a first chance as a teacher. Although María is a lawful permanent resident, she asked to have her name changed out of fear that ICE agents could show up and arrest her four workers, who do not have legal status.

One of her caregivers lives in Maryland, a neighboring state, and drives to work every day, fearful of being intercepted and detained: “She always tells me: ‘My biggest fear is not being able to get home, that my child is waiting for me at night and finding out they have arrested me,’” María says.

This teacher is part of a WhatsApp group with nearly 670 members that shares real-time alerts about ICE presence in the city. On May 19 alone, EL PAÍS reviewed dozens of messages, photos and videos shared in that space. Among them, a woman said she had seen one of the vans supposedly used by agents: “My legs are a little shaky.”

Undocumented migrants who sustain childcare

The childcare and early education industry in Washington relies heavily on immigrant women: here, about 40% of early childhood workers are immigrants (both documented and undocumented), nearly double the national average. The figure is part of a state-by-state analysis that the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley published in 2025 using Census data.

For Hannah Oppermann, senior analyst at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), who specializes in state childcare and early education policies, this sector is a key piece of the capital’s economy. “In Washington, D.C. most childcare services are required to be regulated: there are caregivers who look after children in their own homes, centers with many children, and all those spaces are critical for the city to keep functioning.”

At the entrance to her daycare, Delia has posted her early childhood education certificates and those of her workers. She also displays her license to operate what in D.C. is known as a ‘home daycare’: a childcare center that operates within a family residence. She lives there with one of her children and her husband, who once a week plays guitar and harmonica for the nine babies and children who attend the center. Until May, he also worked nights as a busser in a restaurant. He stopped going for fear of running into ICE agents and now delivers orders for Uber Eats.

Her studies, which include a two-year technical degree and English courses, are the result of a great effort to fulfill her dream of working in early childhood education, a calling she felt at a young age and which led her on an exhausting journey to the United States. To cross Mexico, she had to hide for three days inside a trailer with some 70 other migrants. She carried only some cookies and a canteen of water. “Many people fainted, others had to relieve themselves in there because it was a long trip.” She says she would not do it again.

It was so hard for her to get where she is now that she now devotes herself to training and helping others. She is known in the neighborhood as a sort of fairy godmother: she has guided more than five former employees who later set up their own home daycares.

Former and current parents of the center also say they are very grateful for the dedication with which Delia and her team care for their children. They fear they will be arrested. “It would be a devastating blow if they were affected,” a parent who used to leave their child with Delia tells EL PAÍS in a WhatsApp voice message. “(Being) our only child, our first child, we had a higher level of anxiety (...) and the way Delia and her team worked gave us confidence.”

Delia, who tries to limit trips outside the home to go to church or for medical appointments, hopes she won’t have to keep hiding, or have to conceal the daycare she is so proud of. “I’m going to celebrate the day I put my ‘banner’ on my house wall, saying I am a high-quality program here in D.C.”

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