As deportations rise in President Trump’s second term, New York City schools have made efforts on several fronts to inform immigrant families of their rights in a sanctuary city.
Trainings. Flyers. Referrals to immigration advocates and legal services.
But education officials were in search of a medium to better share the information with young people.
This week, the NYC Department of Education released “Know Your Rights,” a 32-page comic book based on real events in the news and with guidance from Mayor Mamdani’s immigrant affairs office. In an introduction, the authors wrote their hope is the comic can help educate the public and prepare immigrant students and their families for potential encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or “ICE.”
“With everything going on in the world — with myself as an immigrant, mayor as an immigrant — I’m thinking about what we need to do to ensure that every young person feels safe in our schools,” Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in an interview.
“We’re heading into the summer, and we know kids are always looking for, and parents are always looking for, a fun way to address a very serious topic. I think doing it through a comic book makes it accessible for people.”
The rights presented in the comic represent a doubling down on New York’s sanctuary city laws, which, among other protections, maintain that non-local law enforcement, such as ICE, can’t enter a public school without a judicial warrant.
The city’s approach has been a flashpoint of controversy amid the Trump immigration crackdown. The Trump administration has tried going after the city’s policies for undocumented immigrants, including by filing a federal lawsuit last summer. Mamdani signed an executive order as recently as February reinforcing New York’s sanctuary status.
The comic book is the latest school-based initiative aimed at supporting immigrant students — a list that also includes a program that connects teachers with resources to support newcomer families, and informal networks of parents and advocates who serve as rapid response teams when a child or their parent is detained. It’s the 42nd comic published by the city’s public school system, which uses in-house graphic texts as part of its social studies and civics curriculum.
The comic is expected to be distributed in schools, alongside a resource guide and lesson plan for educators. So far, 75,000 copies of the comic have been printed in English, and 75,000 in Spanish. Education officials said they’re on track to translate the comic into a dozen other languages in a digital format this month,.
“That was really important,” said Tamara Mair, who leads Project Open Arms, the public school initiative that supports newly arrived immigrant families. “That it got to reach every kid in our system, that they had something that I could understand with my family.”
That information has become increasingly relevant since the start of Trump’s second term, with a rise of high-profile cases of local public school students being detained or deported. Those include Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high school student held in federal immigration detention for 10 months, and 6-year-old Dayra, a Queens elementary school student who was deported with her mother to Ecuador.
“This comic book was created to meet students where they are and provide clear, accessible information that can help them support themselves and their families during moments of uncertainty,” MOIA Commissioner Faiza Ali said in a statement.
In one of the stories, readers meet the fictional Alfonso family as an ICE agent knocks on their apartment door in Jamaica, Queens. Rodrigo Alfonso tells his son, Diego, to open the door. But Diego knows his rights and tells his dad: “Not yet.”
Rodrigo is uncertain, but at his son’s urging, complies. The graphic text instructs Rodrigo to ask the agents, some depicted in face masks to shield their identity, who they are, what they’re there for, and if they have a warrant to enter his home. The vignette shows the importance of informing students of their rights, Samuels said, “so that they can be advocates for themselves and for others.”
“Sometimes the young people are going to be the people who are more knowledgeable, and that’s why it’s so important that we are doing this in schools,” Samuels said.
The city’s school system started publishing comic books in 2020. It has to date printed 5.6 million graphic texts across 42 titles, making it one of the largest comic publishers in the country.
“It’s a really beautiful comic,” said Joe Schmidt of the Department of Social Studies and Civics, which publishes the comics. “As soon as kids can kind of get their hands on it, open it up,”
Samuels said he never expected to be on the front page of a comic book.
“It was definitely not on my bingo card when I started in education,” the chancellor said. “But I think it’s good to, especially as an immigrant, be represented in this way.”