I am, of course, talking about the new presidential administration's change in orders about ICE agents going into places that had traditionally been considered off limits, namely hospitals, churches, and schools. While that was not codified until 2011, it had been traditional practice for much longer as these places are widely recognized as places that should be welcoming, safe, and open to all.
The new regime doesn't often recognize what is codified, and they care even less about tradition. So, we now have armed ICE agents with full authority to enter a school and demand that an undocumented 9 year old be handed over in the name of national security. There is also a strange proposal to turn IRS employees into ICE agents as though all government employees are equally qualified to serve in multiple roles. (Actually I don't know if that is true. It's just something I read on Twitter. It's hard to know right now because reality is more bizarre than fiction.)
I want to start with the fact that I believe in the rule of law. Like a lot. I don't even speed. I believe in doing things the right way. Once, in high school, I accidentally saw an answer to a test in my peripheral vision and intentionally put the wrong answer on my test so I would know for certain I wasn't cheating. I'm saying all of that so you know that I am not a person with a sense of relative morality.
But I also know we are talking about something more complicated than a speeding ticket. We are talking about families who have made the difficult decision to leave their homes to come to America seeking a better life. Some of them attempt to enter legally, through claims of asylum, only to have the chief executive of the US mock them and call them liars in his speeches. They are told to use an app that is difficult to access and to remain in poorly maintained camps in Mexico. So, some of them do cross illegally because the cost of trying to do it the right way is just too steep. If you expect people to follow the rules, you can't make them nearly impossible to follow. But . . .
Rather than address the problem by making legal immigration easier, this administration has chosen to address the issue down river. They eliminated the app that, while poor, did at least provide some with the right way to do things. One of Trump's first executive orders was to end birthright citizenship. While that one will likely be struck down by the courts because he can't change the 14th amendment with an EO, it is causing confusion and damage in the meantime. And, one day 2 of his administration, the promised "mass deportations" started. ICE agents are going into communities with a high latino population and rounding people up. They are being treated inhumanely - it's one thing to put them on a plane to send them back; it's another to put them in chains while doing so - and the border czar brazenly says that all undocumented people should be frightened and just go ahead deport themselves if they want to avoid being treated this way.
Thanks pro-life party. Apparently, the sanctity of human life only exists until you are born.
I know I haven't gotten to the school part of this yet, but there is so much involved with this rapid change that it is all muddled up in my brain and needs to be worked out a little.
Okay, for the school part. When I taught in public school, we did not know the immigration status of any student. It wasn't our job to know. The only thing required by a school for enrollment was proof of address, which most people presented using a water bill or something similar. After that, it was the job of the school to provide the best education we could for every child sitting in front of us. I had children of every color, race, and creed. I had refugee sisters from Zaire who spoke little English (and we later learned one of them was deaf because of the bombs that exploded near their home). I had kids who had spent the weekend in jail for theft sitting in my class on Monday morning.
At no point did any of us say, "We can't teach him because he's a criminal." or "We can't teach her because her English skills are nonexistent." or even "I can't teach the redneck in my class because he's a bigot." We taught the kids in front of us to the best of our ability. That was our job.
Teachers help kids with everything from the heartache of a breakup or divorce of their parents to treatment of injury and cleanup up vomit to the de-escalation of a conflict between two kids competing for alpha status. We kept them as safe as we could during Covid and have dealt with their high levels of anxiety. Any teacher that has been in the business for more than a couple of years has probably had to prepare themselves with a threat of violence at some level. We are trained in lockdown procedures and what to do if a gunman enters our classroom. During my 2nd year, a threat letter was found at my school, and I told every one of my classes, "No one is getting to you without going through me first."
Do you know how many hours of class time are taken each year to do fire drills, tornado, drills, and lockdown drills. We do this in spite of the fact that school fires are rare and few tornados take place in the middle of the day because we are told that our primary job, even before educating them, is keeping them safe from harm.
Now, teachers are being asked to stand aside while armed ICE agents come in and take away undocumented kids. Kids don't make the choice to illegally cross a border, but they are being taken from schools without due process. And, it doesn't just affect them. The rest of the class has to sit there and watch as armed men take one of their friends away. (Republican lawmakers, here's a note for you. You're going to need to allocate some more money for mental health services for this generation of kids because you are going to cause large scale PTSD in a number of communities.)
Even though they turned out to be incorrect, I was proud of the school in Chicago who turned away men they believed to be ICE agents. (It turned out to be secret service people investigating a threat on a politician, but I'm going to say that, in the current climate, it's on them for not calling the 90% Latino school to explain who they were before they showed up.). They followed their training, later issuing this statement in their correction to the original story.
"Our security and clerk team followed the protocols that we've been trained and practiced and have discussed, and due to that we were able to ensure the safety of our school and all of our students," Ortega said. "We will not open our doors for ICE, and we are here to protect our children and make sure they have access to an excellent education."
Schools everywhere are having to send out communications like the one below, posted by my friend who is a school social worker.
To those who have been screaming for the last decade that schools should stop trying to "indoctrinate kids" and just teach them reading and math, please know that you are making it harder to do that. Teachers now have to focus even more of their mental resources on student anxiety, standing up to bullies of all types, and think through what it will take to keep them safe from a new threat.
If you want teachers to be able to teach, stay out of their classrooms.
I'll get back to the education part of this blog next week.
