Hundreds of Colorado Springs students walked out of school Friday to protest ICE. I’m not going to debate their decision to protest.

But if we are teaching young students to protest government power, are we teaching them enough to understand the consequences on both sides of the policy they are protesting?

Because not far from some of the schools participating in Friday’s walkout lived a young woman in the DACA program named Esmeralda “Ezzy” Contreras Mata.

This policy hurt her too.

Ezzy was 25, and a mother of four. She had been brought to the United States from Mexico when she was one. According to her adoptive father, Matthew Barbee, Ezzy maintained her DACA status and kept up with the paperwork required of her.

Then, on May 16, 2024, she was murdered in her Security-Widefield home.

According to an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office investigation reviewed by The Gazette, Thabiso Makhafola raped and beat Ezzy before killing her with a hatchet. The children were home.

Makhafola then killed himself.

Makhafola was also an immigrant. He was a South African national who had entered the United States on a student visa that expired nearly a decade earlier. His history reportedly included a protection-order filing by Ezzy, allegations of domestic violence and kidnapping and a two DUIs.

In February 2024, just three months before Ezzy was killed, Makhafola was taken into custody and placed in ICE’s Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora.

He was facing deportation. But according to The Gazette, an immigration judge released him while he fought removal through the legal process.

A few months later, Ezzy was dead.

That does not mean every ICE action is justified. It does not erase legitimate questions about excessive enforcement, detention conditions, due process or the treatment of immigrants.

Government power should be questioned. But government failure to use power appropriately should be questioned too.

We’re told the  statewide protest involved students at more than 200 schools, according to organizers. Social media helped spread the effort quickly, and outside organizations helped promote participation.

That is political education happening in real time. As it should. But I am worried about how we are teaching.

Civic education expert Diana Hess has spent decades studying how schools teach controversial political issues. Her prescription isn’t to shield students from politics. Quite the opposite.

“We want students to hear multiple and competing views,” Hess says, “But we also want them to learn how to evaluate them rigorously.”

Students are being told about families frightened by immigration raids. They are also learning about due process and the dangers of government overreach.

But did anyone explain to the students that immigration policy has consequences in the other direction too?

But did anybody tell them about Ezzy? Do the students in Widefield or Fountain school districts know that she was killed by a man whose visa had expired years earlier?

Did anyone tell the students that ICE had him?Or that he was released while fighting deportation?

Someone should tell them.

We do young people no favor by handing them heroes and villains before they have learned enough to understand the systems they are protesting.

Teach them about people harmed when government becomes too powerful. But also teach them about people harmed when government fails to act.

Teach them about due process. But also teach them about these kinds of unintended consequences.

Then let them decide what they believe.

Darla Barbee said something after Ezzy’s murder that belongs in this conversation:

“This is not political. This was just preventable.”

Maybe that is the lesson our kids need most. Talk to a young person you know about Ezzy and her story. Give them a face that represents the consequences of our current ICE catch and release policy.  

Help them think deeply about both sides of this issue. 

Rachel Stovall is a Colorado Springs event manager, entertainer and community advocate.