In Durham, North Carolina, community members have mobilised to protect immigrant families from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, using carpools, food deliveries, school patrols and policy advocacy. The response follows a statewide enforcement campaign in November that saw ICE double its arrests in North Carolina in 2025 compared to the previous year, with 3,400 arrests from 20 January to 15 October.
Parents, many of them fathers, formed welcoming committees outside schools on 19 November, handing out whistles and gloves to serve as watchdogs against federal agents. Norma Portillo, PTA president at Club Boulevard elementary and an immigrant from Honduras, organised rideshares for families afraid to leave home and expanded a weekly food pantry run by mothers and grandparents. PTAs across the district used the rideshare network to deliver food.
“I am so touched by how the community is willing to help people,” Portillo said. “We not only respect each other, but we care for each other.” Dean Fitzgerald, a father of an elementary schooler, stood guard at a school in early December, greeting children as they arrived. His group includes volunteers who are not parents, and after running out of whistles, one member 3D-printed more.
“Mostly, we need parents to feel safe to bring their kids back to school,” Fitzgerald said. “So they know who’s going to be here, who’s watching, who’s going to get picked up by whom.” One volunteer, Jeana, noticed unmarked SUVs with masked people nearby on 19 November and joined patrols the next day, saying she had a “visceral reaction” to neighbours being terrorised.
Natalie Kitaif, a PTA member and mother of two, said her kindergartner discusses friends’ fears that they may come home to find their parents missing. “They seem to know that adults are being targeted,” Kitaif said. Teachers have also been on the frontline. Holly Hardin, a middle school teacher at Lakewood Montessori, said the community is building “a model of intentional care for each other, larger than any one group.”
