The Teenage Brothers Tracking ICE (Upper-Intermediate)

ESL/EFL Level: B2/C1 (Upper-Intermediate)
Lesson Topics: immigration enforcement, breaking the law
Skill Focus: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: ice-immigrant-raids-upper-intermediate-102025.docx

  • The lesson begins with warm-up questions about community and the immigration raids in the United States.
  • Next, students watch a 4-minute video (TikTok or Reddit link provided) about two home-schooled teenagers from Chicago who volunteer every day to track ICE agents in their community. Regarding the level, the video does contain some higher-level vocabulary, but the teenagers' speech is at a medium pace and contains fairly standard vocabulary. The teenagers explain their motivation for protecting these citizens whom they feel are valuable parts of their community and the value of documenting the arrests. Overall, the video is critical of the ICE raids.
  • The video is followed by comprehension questions.
  • For vocabulary, students match 11 terms from the video to definitions and then use them to create discussion questions to ask a partner.
  • The lesson has two debate topics about migration.
  • The lesson has one roleplay scenario, set as a court hearing between Ben, one of the teenagers, and an immigration judge. Ben must convince the judge to allow a man who entered the country illegally twenty years ago to stay in the country.
  • Next, stepping away from immigration specifically, students review a list of illegal behavior that citizens might do, either for moral or immoral reasons. They must order the items on the list from acceptable to unacceptable.
  • After famous quotations on immigration, students use images and the lesson's vocabulary to describe how they would organize and execute a crackdown to solve one of their country's biggest problems.
  • As the lesson draws to a close, students review the key vocabulary and collocations. Finally, the lesson ends with some final discussion questions.

ICE raid handcuffing an immigrant

UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) Lesson on Illegal Immigration

Warm-up Questions

  1. How would you describe the community where you live?
  2. When you were in high school, did you do anything to benefit your community?
  3. What do you know about the immigration issues currently happening in the U.S.?

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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.

Comprehension Question Answer Key

  1. Students should mention: two homeschooled teenage brothers (Ben and Sam) patrol the suburbs near Chicago to document ICE raids and support detained immigrants’ families. They oppose Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz.
  2. It means a continuous chase where one side (ICE) tries to catch people while the other (activists) tries to avoid or track them.
  3. She wanted her sons to help protect their community and document ICE arrests after seeing raids happening nearby.
  4. A large-scale immigration crackdown launched by the Trump administration in Illinois to capture undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
  5. They say ICE is targeting ordinary families and non-criminal immigrants rather than dangerous offenders.
  6. They look for out-of-state license plates, large or newer SUVs, usually clean — typical of ICE vehicles.
  7. It helps raise awareness, hold authorities accountable, and protect individuals from being detained without cause.
  8. It gives them real-world understanding of politics, civil rights, and journalism, though it may also be stressful or risky.

Vocabulary answer key: 1-crackdown, 2-race, 3-confirmation, 4-targeting, 5-suburbs, 6-documenting, 7-patrols, 8-errand, 9-headed, 10-hearing, 11-swept up

Collocations: 1-g, 2-f, 3-a, 4-d, 5-c, 6-b, 7-e

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