Chicago school officials set off a panic when they announced that federal immigration agents had tried to enter an elementary school, reports the Washington Post. The principal texted parents, telling them staff had thwarted an ICE raid, and ordered a lockdown.
Children were terrified, a 10-year-old girl told Post reporters.
“Everybody get in your classroom, get in your classroom," the principal announced over the intercom. "This is a code red, a lockdown. This is not a drill.”
. . . Just the day before, she recalled, her teacher had warned the entire class that immigration agents might now be looking to enter schools and interrogate children. If anyone comes up to you, the girl remembered her teacher saying, do not talk to them. You don’t have to talk to them.
“Everyone was so scared,” the 10-year-old said, “because we didn’t know if it was a shooter or the immigration police.”
And it turned out to be Secret Service agents, investigating a threat against a "protected individual." They'd identified themselves at the office, left contact information and left. The principal was confused, the district said later, because the Secret Service is part of Homeland Security, as is ICE.
Parents at the school, which is 92 percent Hispanic and about two-thirds English Learners, remain afraid to send their children back to school.
Afraid of deportation, parents in New York City's migrant shelters are keeping their children home from school, reports Chalkbeat.
“Almost nobody is sending their kids [to school] in case they’re taken,” said Amanda, a Venezuelan mother at a hotel shelter.
"The New York City’s Education Department prohibits federal law enforcement agents from entering schools except under narrow circumstances," notes Chalkbeat. (Chicago Public Schools has similar policies.)
If ICE gets to the point of picking up all illegal immigrants, not just those who've committed crimes, they'll surely go to the migrant shelters not the schools. Perhaps parents are thinking that if they're taken in an immigration raid they want their kids with them.
“Kids are scared to leave home and not come back to see their parents,” a parent coordinator at a Queens school told Mayor Eric Abrams at a town hall. That's a more reasonable fear. And, if there are such raids during school hours, school officials will need to cooperate with ICE to get students reunited with their parents.
Instead of telling migrant parents that schools are dangerous, "activists" should provide free immigration counselors to explain the legal options.