School communities across the country are banding together to protect children and families from arrest and deportation on and off campus, sending a clear “not on our watch” message to the Trump administration.
The resistance — born online through group chats and spreadsheets — has culminated in a highly coordinated effort to expose federal immigration agents and ensure vulnerable students safe passage to and from school, among other efforts.
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Marissa Bejarano, a middle and high school teacher in southeast Louisiana, is a part of this movement, attending word-of-mouth meetings — participants are asked not to post them on social media — to learn how best to protect those most impacted by Trump’s dragnet.
The administration began its promised crackdown in New Orleans last Wednesday in operation “Swamp Sweep.”
“For me, it feels like my nervous system is part of a collective,” Bejarano told The 74. “We are connected by fear, uncertainty and the grief of not being able to rely on the future. But going to a community meeting really pulled me out of my sadness. I walked in overwhelmed but left feeling supported by a group of strangers that want to protect our immigrant community. It’s so important that no one isolates.”
Bejarano, who is Mexican-American, said she spoke to a mother Thursday who had gone into hiding. The teacher was able to offer her and her children assistance and reassurance.
“She was so relieved to talk to me, to have someone listen,” she said. “We were able to get her groceries, discuss a plan for her kids and now she has a local contact that she can reach out to when necessary.”
Resistance efforts in other cities have included parents in Washington, D.C., forming “walking school buses” to deliver other peoples’ kids to campus and teachers in San Diego spending their mornings scouring their community for immigration agents so they can send out a warning. In Chicago, where the confrontations have been particularly brutal, parent patrols started meal trains, ride-share programs and legal defense funds.
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Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, denied DHS enforcement has endangered students and families, maintaining instead that organized opposition has imperiled law enforcement.
“Let me be extremely clear for all media: We are NOT targeting schools,” she said in an email Friday morning. “This assertion is an abject lie. The media is sadly attempting to create a climate of fear and smear law enforcement. These smears are contributing to our ICE law enforcement officers facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them.”
But many children and their families have been detained on or near school grounds since the department, through its Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection arms, began a mass deportation campaign in late spring.
Cristal Medina, 17, with her father, Yasser Ricardo Gomez Flores, and brother Yasser Izam Gomez Guillen Jr. (Cristal Medina)
Cristal Medina, 17 and who attends Charlotte’s East Mecklenburg High School, knows the risks better than anyone. Her father, Yasser Ricardo Gomez Flores, born in Nicaragua, was detained in October after delivering her to school.
He now sits in a Georgia detention center awaiting possible deportation.
“He was detained on Oct. 21, right after dropping me off,” said Medina, who is in the 11th grade. “A group of cars surrounded him and stopped him as he was preparing to cross the bridge near East Meck. He left his van and my mom picked it up soon after.”
Medina was one of hundreds of students who walked out of class Nov. 18, just a few days after immigration enforcement agents landed in North Carolina’s largest city, arresting some 250 people and clashing with demonstrators.
“My father is not a criminal,” Medina told her classmates at an on-campus rally. “He is a responsible and hardworking man who has dedicated himself to his company, showing up every day and contributing to this country. He paid his taxes. He followed the rules. He built a life here with dignity and honesty. All he ever asked for was a chance — a chance to make his dream real: to see me walk across the graduation stage, and to watch me grow into the professional I aspire to become. That dream should not be denied.”
Amiin Harun, a Minneapolis immigration attorney and charter school board chairman. (Amiin Harun)
Amiin Harun, an immigration attorney who represents many Somalis in Minneapolis, said his phone has been ringing nonstop since Trump’s recent rants against his community, with the president calling its members “garbage,” and saying “I don’t want them in our country.”
“It is emanating from the highest office in the land,” Harun told The 74. “The most powerful man in the world is attacking one of the smallest communities in this country. It’s insane.”
Federal agents flooded the Twin Cities last week: at least 19 people have been arrested following the administration’s order to target undocumented Somalis.
One American-born woman of Somali descent was reportedly detained by ICE for 24 hours in the ongoing sweep.
Harun notes local Somalis are asking members of the Hispanic community — until now, the primary target of Trump’s deportation efforts — how to defend themselves, strategizing inside mosques, churches, community centers, on Zoom, Whatsapp and other online forums.
Harun, who also chairs the board of the Delta Academy of Technology and Innovation charter school, has already advised staff on what to do if ICE seeks to enter its grounds: “Lock the door, and tell them no.”
Juan Diego “J.D.” Mazuera Arias (center), who was sworn into office on the Charlotte City Council on Dec. 1, with his campaign supporters in September. (Facebook.com/juan.mazuera)
In Charlotte, newly sworn-in City Councilman Juan Diego “J.D.” Mazuera Arias, a formerly undocumented resident himself, is now trained to spot and verify the presence of federal immigration agents before alerting others online.
He said that while the Customs and Border Patrol officers leading operation “Charlotte’s Web” might have come to spark fear, they ignited something else.
“We made a web of our own,” Arias told The 74. “One that protected us and that was woven by love, unity, community and laughter. In spite of fear, despair, anxiety and confusion, we always find a way to show the world who we are.”
Anti-ICE efforts have extended well beyond the schoolhouse. Protesters foiled a New York City raid in Chinatown in late November, hurling sidewalk planters into the street to block agents’ path. And Long Islanders gathered in bitter temperatures this past weekend to demand Suffolk County end ties with ICE, which has been training agents at a gun range there for decades — and is now heavily patrolling its streets.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law Tuesday new rules restricting immigration enforcement outside states courthouses and making it easier for residents to sue immigration agents for alleged civil rights violations. The Democratic governor said the measures would “counter the Trump’s administration’s depravity.“
While pushback against the federal government’s mass deportation campaign has also sometimes employed humor and satire, a steady undercurrent of dread is prompting many parents to keep their children at home and to avoid high-risk drop-off and pick-up times.
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Student absences more than tripled to 30,399 in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District after agents arrived.
Senior Zara Taty started to organize her classmates on the same day the enforcement operation began, creating a Group Meet chat with 25 people that grew to nearly 300 in a matter of days. Students used the forum to support immigrant families any way they could, including through the walkout where they chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
“I know right now we are frustrated, mad, sad, worried, scared and confused,” Taty told rally attendees. “I think it is important to remember that during these difficult times the most important thing to do is to stick together, to respect one another, to show empathy and show love.”
Across the country in Los Angeles, school children are walking to campus in groups and hoping for strength in numbers. Los Angeles Unified School District families are also organizing food drives to feed their immigrant neighbors who can no longer work because of fear of deportation, an LAUSD teacher told The 74. The educator, who said ICE was outside her school in mid-October, asked not to be identified because of her own immigration status.
She said teachers have been trained in helping parents create family preparedness plans in case they are detained or deported. She’s also pushing the district, which has pledged to block ICE enforcement action, to take an even more proactive role in keeping kids safe, perhaps by having schools go into lockdown when immigration agents are nearby.
Aggressive enforcement actions have caused students’ grades to plummet — and it’s not just immigrant kids, she said, but the entire student body.
“Students are exhausted,” she said. “Their hearts, their minds, their souls are exhausted. And our parents are scared that they’re not going to see their kids again. It’s honestly horrific, and it’s insane because it’s been happening for so long.”
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Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, is director of the National Newcomer Network, a coalition of more than 150 educators, researchers and advocates from 35 states.
She said she’s pleased to see how organized the resistance movement has become, including in California, where parents are, for example, driving half their kids’ soccer team to tournaments because others “don’t feel safe leaving their home and they don’t want their child not to have the opportunity to engage in extracurriculars.”
But no matter how much support communities show, she said, children are living through a harrowing era.
“This is going to be a moment that many kids remember for their lifetimes,” she said.
