On a chilly morning, teachers at Nash Elementary School in a working-class Chicago neighbourhood greeted students with high-fives and hugs, while distributing flyers boldly proclaiming: “Defend your rights under the threat of occupation.”
Four weeks into President Donald Trump’s ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ deportation drive, mass arrests across the city – sweeping up parents en route to school and entire families – have instilled fear in immigrant communities and a protective stance from educators, according to city leaders, the teachers’ union, parents, and immigration advocates.
Some 500 National Guard troops began deploying near Chicago on Wednesday, under orders from Trump.
“My Latino students, they’re fearing everything,” said Yaritza Santana, a science teacher at Nash Elementary. “They fear that they’re going to just be taken.”
Lesson plan: ‘Know your rights’
The Department of Homeland Security said it has arrested 1,000 people in the Chicago area since September 8, when the deportation push began.
“Operations around schools are increasingly more and more common,” city alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez said. “It’s caused so much fear and terror in schools.”
While Chicago Public Schools in 2019 designated schools as “sanctuary spaces,” barring ICE agents from entering without a warrant, that halo of protection does not apply on the way to and from school, leaving immigrants vulnerable to ICE arrests, advocates say.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a press release on Tuesday that ICE officers do not target schools but didn’t answer specific questions from Reuters.
The increased presence of federal agents has produced a range of responses from educators – from street protests to ‘know your rights’ leaflets and lesson plans – according to a dozen Reuters interviews with teachers, parents, the city’s mayor, the president of the teachers’ union and local lawmakers.
The leaflets advise students that they have the right to remain silent and to ask for a lawyer, as well as deny officers and agents access to their home without a warrant.
The teachers’ union is also pushing Chicago Public Schools for e-learning options so that students without legal immigration status don’t have to leave their homes, said Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates.
“People should not be afraid to come to school,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an interview with Reuters. “I’ve ensured that our Chicago public schools and all of our public institutions are very clear about the rights that we possess and the rights that we get to protect.”
E-learning for immigrant children
Johnson said e-learning was not ideal but he would use “every single tool” to protect Chicago residents, including the courts and his executive authority as mayor.
High-profile patrols of areas popular with tourists and standoffs with protesters – including one on October 3 where ICE agents lobbed tear gas near an elementary school – are fueling tensions between federal agents and residents, and anxiety among school children, teachers said.
Some of the teachers Reuters spoke to said they had seen students hug each other, promising that they wouldn’t be separated by immigration officers; a teary-eyed high schooler asking her teacher what happened to a missing relative believed to be in an ICE detention center; and a classroom of anxious faces during “know your rights” training.
One school, in suburban Franklin Park, Illinois, went on a soft lockdown after Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a father of two, was shot and killed by ICE officers after dropping his children off at daycare and school. Top Illinois officials called for an investigation into his killing, which DHS has said was justified.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m afraid. But I’m also very angry, and that anger fuels me,” said Anna Lane, who teaches social studies at Thomas Kelly Preparatory, a high school where most students are Latino.
Lane said she recently spent nearly an hour on a “know your rights” training for her students.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she told students in a classroom decorated with maps and flags. “You’re staying here. You just got to make sure you’re informed and know your rights.”
But fear may be keeping some students away. The number of English language learners dropped to 86,172 students from 88,807 the previous year, a decrease of 2.7%, according to Chicago Public Schools enrollment data, although English learners still make up about one-quarter of all CPS students.
Erika Mendoza, a Mexican immigrant with no legal status and a single mother of two U.S.-born children attending Chicago schools, broke down in tears in her home in Little Village, among Chicago’s largest Latino enclaves, describing her concerns about ICE.
“I have a lot of fear when it comes to sending my daughters to school,” Mendoza said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I’m afraid, but it’s important to be strong. I don’t want to relay my worries to my daughters.”
