This post has been updated.
On Thursday, San Diego Unified’s Linda Vista Elementary became the latest local school community hit hard by a targeted ICE arrest. At around 3:10 p.m., minutes before school let out, immigration agents pulled up in an unmarked van and arrested a father waiting near the school to pick up his child, according to district officials. The student’s mother was later called to come pick up their waiting child.
During a Friday morning press conference at the school, San Diego Unified Superintendent Fabiola Bagula could barely conceal her disgust at the incident, which she said struck fear into the community.
“These are three-year-old to 11-year-old children – a child that did not get picked up from school by their parents. This is traumatic. There’s a reason why those people are wearing masks (and it’s) because they know it’s wrong to do,” Bagula said. “There may be a lot of debates about immigration reform, but there should be no debate that this kind of tactic is inhumane.”
Board President Cody Petterson echoed Bagula’s sentiments, calling the agents “masked paramilitary forces terrorizing families.”
“You should not be abducted as you’re waiting for a child to come out of school. It doesn’t matter, honestly, where you are on the political spectrum. No one thinks that’s a good thing,” Petterson said.
In an email, ICE officials wrote that the operation targeted an undocumented man who’d allegedly used an American’s social security number. While fraudulently using a social security number is a federal crime, it’s a far cry from the Trump administration’s pledge to go after “the worst of the worst—including gang members, murderers, and rapists.”
The man arrested Thursday is also far from the only nonviolent immigrant arrested in Trump’s crackdown. As of June, deportation data indicated that 93 percent of those detained by ICE had no criminal convictions.
In the email, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, also reiterated that the arrest occurred off-campus, something all district officials underscored in their comments about the incident.
“Any smears that ICE targeted an elementary school are contributing to the 1000% increase in assaults against our brave ICE law enforcement,” McLaughlin wrote.
Exactly what that increase means on the ground is unclear. Department of Homeland Security officials have been mum about the raw numbers in recent months. But in June, officials told Fox News that assaults on agents had increased to 79 since Trump took office, up from 10 during the same period last year — a 700 percent increase.
Regardless of exactly where the arrest occurred, the anxiety inspired by it is especially troubling to school leaders because of the measurable impact such actions can have on things like attendance. A recent Stanford study found that after the Central Valley was hit with sustained ICE raids, student absences at nearby schools jumped by 22 percent. That’s a frightening statistic given how big an impact student attendance has on performance and school funding.
The growing handful of incidents like this one also highlights a basic tension: while educators and school officials want to keep students and their families safe, there’s not much they can actually do.
San Diego Unified, like many other districts in the county, has adopted policies to respond to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They mostly boil down to ensuring ICE agents have a valid warrant should they try to enter a school. That does nothing to protect parents waiting around the corner to pick up their child, or arriving at school to drop them off.
But it doesn’t stop educators from wanting to do more, Bagula said after the press conference.
“I know we have beautiful educators that have actually told me, ‘I’ll go out and fight them.’ I’m like, ‘Please do not, because then you will be in trouble as well.’ We don’t want that,” Bagula told me. “I can’t advise anyone to break the law or put themselves in danger, and then I’m also an educator, and I know I would.”
Update: This post has been updated to include details about the arrest provided by DHS officials.
Everyone should be alarmed at masked people showing up and taking people on the street into custody, regardless of whether it’s in front of a school. It’s doubly troubling to have it done in front of a school, where young children are present and where some young child (or children) is left feeling abandoned and terrified.
Even if there is a legitimate reason to arrest a parent, there has to be a better way to do it. For example, why didn’t they target the parent at work, instead?
those who are complaining about a Federal agency doing it’s job throughout the decades have something to hide; not once have they whined about the agents in their own countries doing this, only here in the U.S. for they know the news will spin it to lure the liberal White women to hysteria. Anyone complicit with hiring, harboring them should be fined heavily. Same as if a bank robber to refuge in your home. They broke the laws of this country; steal social security numbers, use local, State and Federal services and money; all the gravy until it’s over. So it’s over now, you got this far now go back.