Last Tuesday, U.S. Border control conducted immigration raids in Kern County, California:
“It was profiling, it was purely field workers,” said Sara Fuentes, store manager of the local gas station. Fuentes said that at 9 a.m., when the store typically gets a rush of workers on their way to pick oranges, two men in civilian clothes and unmarked Suburbans started detaining people outside the store. “They didn’t stop people with FedEx uniforms, they were stopping people who looked like they worked in the fields.” Fuentes says one customer pulled in just to pump gas and agents approached him and detained him.
As a result:
“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting. This sent shockwaves through the entire community,” said Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, on Thursday. “People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn’t show up.”
Emphasis added
This week, of course, Joe Biden is still president. That isn't true next week, when Donald Trump, who has made attacking immigrants a centerpiece, is.
This is not about "the border." As The Bulmark noted this week:
Polls have shown that while a plurality of Americans say they support mass deportations, advocates say voters don’t fully understand what it entails or don’t believe Trump will go through with the most extreme version. Groups are ready to share the stories of what is happening inside communities, but Matos said much depends on whether the media—hollowed out by cuts—will devote the adequate resources.
“I don’t think Americans understand what’s coming,” she said. “I would bet a majority of Americans would be shocked when some of their friends are deported. Or the parents of the best friend of their child. I want those stories told, too.”
Emphasis added
While for months we have seen headlines regarding the incoming administration's hostility towards immigrants, and the resulting impacts this will have on schools, with the incoming administration already saying it will no longer abide by "sensitive location" guidance, which included restrictions on enforcement action around schools (along with hospitals and places of worship), what I haven't seen, particularly in Massachusetts, is preparation for that.
New York City has offered guidance to both parents and to schools. California has moved to do what it can to protect immigrant families. Thus far the only indication of anything from Massachusetts has been a reminder by DESE of the protected rights of immigrant children to enroll for an education.
I was already concerned, and then I saw Juliette Kayyem's (formerly of the Department of Homeland Security) comments on Boston Public Radio last week:
(Sorry, that's weirdly massively and I can't easily change that.)
As a state, at this point, we're still operating off the 2017 guidance issued when Governor Healey was Attorney General.
As noted above, it does not have to be the state, either: one would hope that communities with large numbers of immigrants would be active already and publicly. The New York Times checked in with NYC schools again today; they responded that they are republicizing earlier policies. Brookings has a piece that includes what schools can do, too. As EdSurge notes:
Schools should let families know that they are open to all children, Cervantes says. And if the Trump administration rescinds the sensitive locations policy — now known as the Protected Areas Policy — schools still have rights and the ability to restrict immigration officers from coming into their building, she says, adding: They continue to have legal obligations to protect the data of all students and families in their systems — that information will not be shared with immigration enforcement agents. None of those policies or rights will change no matter what the administration does on Day One, Cervantes says.
I understand that we are walking a line here: at this point, everything is rhetoric, because there has not yet been a change of administration. That does not mean, however, that we can wait to see what happens, when what very well might happen happens here very early on.
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Ongoing reminder that I speak here only for me and that I am not a lawyer.
School districts do have lawyers, though, and there are experts in immigration out there.
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