Immigration Enforcement in the Schools

Thinking about ICE in the Alexandria City Public Schools

Every classroom teacher in a public school has received this call or message during class: “Please send [name of student] to the main office.” The request might include an explanation, for example, “for dismissal,” or the teacher may get no explanation for the student’s requested departure from class.

This week marks a change for teachers and students in diverse schools such as Alexandria City High School (ACHS). Students may now be removed from a class, or from school altogether, at the direction or request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel. In other words, a student may go to the main office and never come back.

Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Benjamin Huffman issued a directive on January 20 that, in the words of a January 21 DHS press release, “rescinds the Biden Administration’s guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforcement actions that thwart law enforcement in or near so-called ‘sensitive’ areas,” namely, schools and churches.

DHS’ press release said:

This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens—including murders [sic] and rapists—who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.

Enforcing the immigration laws by sending ICE personnel into schools and churches is among the Trump Administration’s most cynical initiatives.

I liked and respected numerous noncitizen (or “undocumented,” seemingly the preferred term) students when I taught English and Journalism for 14 years at the then-T.C. Williams High School. Undocumented students are undoubtedly enrolled at ACHS and other ACPS schools. However, the probability that any of these students had any meaningful agency or involvement in the decisions that brought them to Alexandria and to the city’s public schools is almost certainly zero or nearly so.

Any classroom teacher will confirm that the loss of one student changes a class, even if the student is not the teacher’s most favorite person. A class is a community. For example, an English class explores how writers show what it means to be human. That ICE agents can now, without a court-issued warrant, apprehend a student who could not possibly have intended or decided to be, in DHS’ words, a “criminal alien” is ineffably sad.

Moreover, the message to teachers and students—that government agents in black windbreakers can remove students from school—is terrifying.

The sadness is compounded if we examine why the approximately 6,000 ICE agents are now empowered to go into the public schools to detain or apprehend students who DHS now calls “criminals”. The motive appears to be to coerce or intimidate immigrant families. Even so, ICE enforcement in the public schools misapplies federal power and resources for no productive purpose. Sending ICE personnel into the schools will have no practical effect on the security of America’s borders.

The argument that reliably Blue and progressive Alexandria is an unlikely place for ICE officials to enter ACPS schools is, at best, a wish. What better place than Alexandria, which has declared itself “inclusive,” for DHS and ICE to demonstrate seriousness about enforcing the new policies?

A January 7 article in The New York Times, What if ICE Agents Show Up? Schools Prepare Teachers and Parents detailed the anxieties of parents and school employees about immigration enforcement in the schools and the preparations that New York schools were considering if ICE personnel appear. The article can be viewed

According to the Times, if ICE personnel appear New York school officials have been told to, “Ask the officers to wait outside, and call a school district lawyer.”

The challenge presented by immigration enforcement actions in public schools was compounded by a memorandum issued to Justice Department employees on January 21. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III wrote that the supremacy clause of the Constitution, and other legal authorities, “require state and local actors to comply with the Executive Branch immigration enforcement initiatives.” According to the January 23 edition of The Washington Post, Bove, “ordered U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country to investigate any official who defies those efforts and consider prosecuting them on charges that, if they’re convicted, could send them to prison.”

I hope the School Board, senior ACPS officials, and ACPS’ legal counsel have considered, or will soon consider, what steps or procedures will be followed if a school principal calls ACPS’ headquarters and says, “ICE is here.”

Thanks for reading About Alexandria!

Subscribe for free to receive new posts.