Thread: What Do Schools Do When The ICE-man Cometh?

Facts on Immigration
What Do Schools Do When The ICE-man Cometh?

September 13, 2007
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers raided a meatpacking plant in Grand Island, Nebraska in December 2006, local school officials sprang into action. Twenty-five students in the district had both parents detained, according to Superintendent Steve Joel, and he and his staff worked into the night to make sure each was delivered safely to the home of a relative. While ICE’s official policy is to release a parent with a minor child requiring care, ICE officials in Grand Island and elsewhere have found that detained parents are anxious to protect their children from arrest and deportation, so don’t reveal their identities or whereabouts.
Yesterday’s edition of Education Week examines what policies local school districts are instituting to deal with the increasingly real possibility that immigration raids may sweep up students or their parents for deportation. In Albuquerque, for example, the school district has a strict policy to make schools a safe harbor for children when it comes to immigration enforcement. In nearby Santa Fe, the school instituted a similar policy earlier this year when the parent of a 4 year-old student was arrested by immigration agents in a school’s parking lot.
In Schuyler, Nebraska, which, like Grand Island, has a meatpacking plant, superintendent Robin S. Stevens is preparing.
“We’re trying to be proactive and come up with a plan that will be in place that we’ll never have to use,â€

ICE-man cometh?

I see the real possibility of the schools eventually getting in the way of what ICE must do. Obstruction of justice should be the charge. These school superentedants are really becoming bold and need to be reigned in.