We are in the midst of yet another spate of left-wing violent protests. This time, agitators are fighting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to such a degree that they’ve gotten two people needlessly killed in Minnesota. And now, they are using our children to promote their heinous message and agenda.

Let’s start with the deliberate fanning of the flames of fear from teachers and left-wing parents. CNN recently posted an article in which teachers, superintendents, and parents in Minnesota share stories about how the ICE raids are affecting children’s lives. Purportedly, children of illegal immigrants aren’t coming to school, kids can’t have recess outside, teachers are candidly opining about their opinions of ICE, and parents with adopted kids are afraid that if their children don’t have their ID on them, they might get detained.

Of course, ICE is prioritizing apprehending the worst of the worst, particularly those who have evaded deportation orders due to the serious nature of their crimes (like child rape). The only reason that ICE has to visit particular locations to collect these dangerous criminals at their places of residence is that Democrat leaders like Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were refusing to let ICE grab them in the privacy of jails, nor were they letting law enforcement cooperate with ICE. None of these Democrats even seems to question why it’s become a necessity for ICE to come to Minnesota at all. They all probably still believe the border was secure under President Joe Biden. Or, worse, they don’t care that it was open because, in their opinion, “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

Minnesota isn’t the only blue state that is deliberately making children afraid of ICE. Connecticut, Colorado, California, and many others are refusing to cooperate with ICE and telling stories wildly out of context to frighten average Americans, specifically their children.

Leftists are absolutely thrilled whenever they can plaster the face of a small child all over the media as proof that ICE agents are the devil incarnate. The story of five-year-old Liam Ramos, whose dad abandoned him in the car and whose mother refused to take him in, has become that face for the time being. Just last week, after a judge ordered their release pending their asylum case, Liam was put front and center by his father and the media, who said the child was having nightmares. Of course the child was having nightmares; both parents abandoned him when he needed them most.

Here’s the most telling part. NBC News reports that the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “said he would tell his son that he had become the face of hope and change.” According to Conejo, “He was the global figure who did all this so that the voices of the people demanding freedom would be heard, especially those of the children who are still locked up. I would tell him he was very brave and that I am very proud of him.”

Leftists are using kids in other ways, too. When they can’t plaster a little boy’s picture on their front pages, they organize student walkout protests. Our Samantha Koch covered this in depth last week, but what is abundantly clear is that these “organic” student walkouts are being bought and paid for by the same megadonors that are behind other aspects of the anti-ICE protests across the country.

These walkouts are not only a waste of these kids’ time and their parents’ tax dollars, but they’re not a safe experience. One student thought it would be a brilliant idea to run in front of a counter protester’s car and get hit by it. Another was hit on their motorcycle by a vehicle carrying other students who were ditching school because of the walkout.

While some students are participating in these walkouts, others are choosing to remain at school and pray. Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk recently shared that some students, particularly those associated with TPUSA, are gathering around flags and praying as a counterprotest. “There is a huge juxtaposition to what we are providing our students rather than the other side,” she told Fox News, “so it’s really powerful.”

Public schools allowing our students to be taken advantage of while simultaneously not being honest brokers of education should be on every homeschool poster from here to eternity.

This facilitation of left-wing agitation is terrible because schools are supposed to be the authority while children are in their care. What’s worse, though, is when parents who are the ultimate authority deliberately decide to take their children to an anti-ICE protest, where they might get tear-gassed or experience violence. Their kids then become the next vulnerable face to be blasted on the news.

Take, for example, the Minnesota couple who took their six kids (including a six-month-old) to a protest, left those kids in the car, and then had to rush them to the hospital after a tear-gas canister went off close to the vehicle. The parents initially did not tell the truth and claimed they were returning home from their son’s basketball game. Why were they not entirely honest? Because it looks terrible on so many counts. It’s negligence to leave your kids in a car unattended while you are out protesting, and it’s bad parenting to take them to a protest where the likelihood of it turning ugly is very high.

In conclusion, the Left is showing that the most vulnerable among us, children, are not valuable or sacred to them unless they can be used to help promote their chosen narratives. It’s a tactic akin to Hamas, a terrorist group that would rather see children die for the sake of garnering sympathy on TV or be used as human shields.

No reasonable person likes to see children get hurt. Yet leftists are happy to sacrifice a child’s emotional and physical well-being if it means their cause will be promoted.