While city and state leaders stoke false fears of an ICE invasion, they ignore that Chicago again leads the nation in school age youth murdered and wounded
In 1993, the Chicago Tribune’s “Killing Our Children” series exposed the harrowing deaths of 57 children murdered in the “Chicago Area” in 1992. The successive stories revealed deep-seated failures within our school systems and juvenile justice institutions. Since the beginning of the year, Chicago again leads the nation with 42 school-age youth, 17 and younger-murdered and 154 shot and wounded. This tragedy barely registers with city and state leaders and much of Chicago media as their attention remains fixed not on the violence plaguing Chicago’s children, but on stoking fears about immigration enforcement.
It is entirely reasonable to criticize the federal government’s often clumsy and politically tone-deaf enforcement of immigration law. However, it is also clear that the relentless press conferences, daily statements, and social media campaigns by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Mayor Johnson, and their allies are meant to inflame public anxiety about a supposed “ICE invasion” of schools. Mayor Johnson even went so far as to call for a return to remote learning — a move unsupported by any real threat.
Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media has become complicit, amplifying this narrative by portraying immigration enforcement in the most threatening light and casting ICE agents as an invading force. The first instance of an arrest on school grounds—out of more than 600 public and 200 Catholic schools — prompted sensationalist headlines claiming: “ICE had reached Chicago Public Schools’ doorstep.” The hyperbole reached new heights when a Tribune headline compared federal enforcement to “state-sponsored terrorism.”
Meanwhile, the daily terror experienced in Chicago’s under-resourced communities earns almost no attention. The same week Mayor Johnson and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates held a press conference denouncing ICE, WGN reported that Chicago once again led the nation with over 3,000 shootings near schools in 2024. Since the beginning of the year, 196 school-age children have been killed or wounded in Chicago — yet there have been no press conferences, no protests, and no screaming headlines.
The harsh truth is that student safety has never been a true priority for Mayor Johnson, his aldermanic allies, CTU leadership, or Governor J.B. Pritzker. Recall that union leaders, including then–chief lobbyist and now–mayor Brandon Johnson, played a central role in schools remaining closed for 78 consecutive weeks, threatening illegal strikes. The shuttering of schools for an extended period defied scientific guidance and vastly exceeded reopening timelines followed by private and many public schools.
Governor Pritzker’s recent call for DHS to “stand down” on Halloween was treated as if he were orchestrating a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, he has remained silent on the epidemic of youth violence, despite his own policies fueling it. His thirty-eight COVID emergency proclamations and the restoration of broad union strike rights empowered the CTU to force school closures far beyond what was justified resulted in a huge spike in youth crime that has hardly abated.
During the two years when Chicago schools were mostly closed, more than 900 school-age children were murdered or wounded by gun violence in Chicago. Families suffered in silence, with almost no meaningful response from city officials. The University of Chicago Crime Lab found that, during the pandemic, school-aged youth committed up to 8 percent of murders, 9 percent of shootings, and nearly half of all carjackings — a devastating spike closely tied to school closure policies.
Between 2019 and 2022, Chicago Public Schools lost nearly 37,000 students — a drop fifty times greater than after Mayor Emanuel’s much-maligned 2013 closings. Where these former students are today, or how many have become victims or perpetrators of violence, remains unknown. Data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows that 41 percent of CPS students last year were chronically truant, up from 26 percent in 2019 — thousands of “enrolled” students disconnected from any real academic engagement.
School closures also fueled a youth unemployment crisis. In 2021, the University of Illinois Chicago reported that more than 92,000 city residents aged 16–19 were unemployed, with 66,000 young adults aged 20–24 neither working nor in school. These disconnected youth face heightened risk of victimization and involvement in crime, perpetuating a cycle that will haunt Chicago for generations.
Despite fully reopening the Chicago Public Schools after the COVID pandemic violence against and committed by school age youth has gone unabated. Since 2021, the year Chicago schools reopened to full time in-person instruction, there have been 311 school age youth murdered to date, including 58 children under the age of 12, and 1,462 school age youth shot and wounded. City and school leaders and much of the media remain oblivious to the carnage as a “banality of evil” has descended in which youth violence has become old news-almost accepted except for victims families.
Oblivious to this reality, the CTU — backed by the mayor — forced CPS to remove Chicago Police from high schools, sidelining Local School Councils and stripping schools of trusted adults who once screened for weapons and deterred potential shooters. The union framed school police as oppressors, ignoring evidence that their presence matched student demographics and that interventions were directed by principals — not police.
These campaigns to remove school police coincided with a national surge in school shootings, with more than 300 incidents so far this decade — four times the rate of the last decade. The removal of the police not only left schools unprotected, but the demonization of the police seriously damaged the trust police must have from the students to not only solve crimes and make arrests but to, gather the necessary information to prevent crimes from happening. For many, that lack of trust will be carried into adulthood, further undermining police effectiveness.
As if this weren’t enough, CPS continues to struggle with staff misconduct, often receiving feeble responses from elected officials and little sustained media scrutiny. In 2024, the district's Inspector General investigated 446 cases of staff sexual abuse or harassment — nearly matching 2023’s record — and yet real disciplinary action remains rare. Contrast this with the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has implemented robust one-strike policies and offender registries, far outpacing CPS efforts often stymied by CTU opposition.
Today’s CTU has evolved into a far-left political machine, leveraging its influence not to protect children, but to advance the union’s far-left political objectives — often at students’ expense. Mayor Brandon Johnson and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates have worked to divert public attention from the district’s worsening financial crisis, poor student performance, the lack of quality school choices, and sustained violent crime in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods by fanning fear of “imminent” federal intervention.
For Mayor Johnson, there’s a political urgency: Reclaim lost support among Black voters by depicting immigration enforcement as modern-day slavery. Johnson has called the term “illegal aliens” racist, comparing it to the language used to justify slavery, and recently equated federal enforcement actions to the breakup of Black families during slavery. These rhetorical flourishes distract from the fact that Black residents continue to flee the city — driven away by violence, failing schools, and dwindling opportunities — while newly arrived migrants are welcomed with city subsidies.
To date, Chicago has spent more than $600 million to support migrants, with another estimated $400 million allocated for their schooling. Meanwhile, Johnson’s promised investments in the crumbling South and West Sides remain elusive.
Chicagoans deserve to see through political theater and recognize the dangerous safety crisis facing our youth, as well as the systemic failures by the school system and city leaders who consistently gloss over student safety. This crisis demands a honest, in-depth investigation — exactly the kind of reporting that the Tribune’s “Killing Our Children” series provided a generation ago — and, above all, solutions that put students first, not political agendas.
