Thread: New Mexico School: 2,000 terrified children skip school following an ICE raid

2,000 terrified children skip school following an ICE raid in New Mexico

Thursday Mar 23, 2017 · 1:33 PM PDT



Terrified immigrant parents kept thousands of children home from school following an ICE raid that targeted the New Mexico community of Las Cruces last month, resulting in a 60 percent spike in absences that the district’s superintendent called “alarming”:

On February 15th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) officers conducted a raid in Las Cruces, arresting people at a trailer park on the outskirts of town. The raid came a few weeks after President Trump signed two executive orders, signalling his plans to fulfill a campaign promise of cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Rumors spread that there were further raids planned, though none took place. On February 16th, a Thursday, Las Cruces’s public schools saw a sixty-per-cent spike in absences compared to the previous week—twenty-one hundred of the district’s twenty-five thousand students missed school. Two thousand students stayed away again the next day. Attendance returned to normal the following week, which made the two-day rash of absences all the more pronounced. “It was alarming,” Greg Ewing, the district’s superintendent, told me. News of the raid caused such fear in the community that Ewing wrote a letter to parents on the 16th, in English and Spanish, reassuring them that “we do not anticipate any ice activity occurring on school campuses.”

At the city’s high schools—Arrowhead Park Early College High is nearly entirely Latino, according to the New Yorker—absentee rates went up by 25 percent following the raid and subsequent rumors. But at the city’s elementary and middle schools, where younger students are more likely to be dropped off by an undocumented immigrant parent or relative, the numbers skyrocketed.

“In the two days after the raids, absences at elementary schools rose by almost a hundred and fifty per cent.”

ICE issued a 2011 “policy memo to field officers outlining a list of so-called ‘sensitive locations’—including schools, churches, and hospitals—where they should refrain from searching, interrogating, or arresting individuals ‘for the purpose of immigration enforcement,’” but advocates don’t trust Trump regime officials to uphold Obama-era instructions.

What is assured here is that we are traumatizing a generation of children. According to a 2013 Health Impact Study, “almost three-fourths of undocumented parents with children under the age of 18 reported that their children experienced symptoms of PTSD, including repetitive thoughts about stressful experiences, avoidance of certain activities, and hyper-alert behavior.”

“Nearly 30 percent of undocumented parents reported that their children were afraid all or most of the time.”

Another study found that children who have had one parent who has been deported “may also suffer from poverty, diminished access to food and health care, mental health and behavioral problems and limited educational opportunities.” An estimated 5 million U.S. citizen children in this nation have at least one undocumented parent.

As raids continue to terrorize immigrant communities across the nation, expect these kinds of tragedies to become more and more common. Donald Trump keeps pledging that America will return to winning again, but it’s really our kids who are losing here.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3...-in-New-Mexico

Good...take your illegal SELVES and your children and sell out, pack up and get out if you are so terrified.

I guess if I broke the law I would be "terrified" too. That is the baggage that goes along with being a criminal. How many illegal anchor babies did taxpayers foot the bill for. Take them all with you.

Put them in school on YOUR soil.

Think about this. No one has any numbers of how many of these children attend our school and the cost to educate them. But they know exactly how many of them miss a single day of school at one time.

If 60% were afraid to go to school, then you can assume that's the 60% that shouldn't be in the schools to begin with.

Keep up the good work ICE. Do NOT let these sob story articles bother you one damn bit. You've got a job to do so just do it. These people you're removing from our country have killed, run drugs, overpopulated, stolen jobs, stolen welfare, raped, defrauded, terrified an drained our nation dry as a bone. They have to go. There is no alternative.

Originally Posted by Judy

If 60% were afraid to go to school, then you can assume that's the 60% that shouldn't be in the schools to begin with.

I was thinking the same thing.

An estimated 5 million U.S. citizen children in this nation have at least one undocumented parent.

Coincides with 5 million DAPA "parent of an anchor baby" that obama wanted to exempt from deportation in his extension of DACA - guess what - they are still here! Collecting them monies every month - the more babies, the more monies rec'd. All on the backs of American citizens.

Their kids seem to suffer from maladies, more so than in average numbers. All medical expenses paid for by us whatever special care they need. One has to wonder if the fathers are partaking in drugs they are connected with as many are the fronts, safe temporary havens for movers, etc or just plain damaged genes, exposure to the parents in mexico from toxicity. - no regulations there on industries. Oh - that will be happening here soon too!

Schools have to count attendance daily so they get their money. More bodies, more money. As they say, just follow the money!

Exactly, Jean. That's it in the nutshell for the schools and what they're doing to our country.

First we have to swallow that this is true.

Maybe 2,000 didn't attend school - just maybe.

Was it a planned thing so this heart breaking article could be written or was it just a fabricated lie?