Immigrant Activists Warn ICE Gaining Foothold in US Schools

Activists have warned that President Donald Trump's continued crackdown on immigration will affect students and their families as the federal government seeks to extend its surveillance to schools to hunt down undocumented students.

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According to the74million, nearly 20,000 police officers have been deployed to U.S. schools to supposedly "maintain safety." Placed by local police or sheriff’s departments, these officers also have ties to immigration authorities.

Over 60 enforcement agencies are currently participating in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's enforcement program. And nearly half of these agencies are operating in schools including Maryland, Arizona and South Carolina.

Just recently, in Long Island, New York, school authorities at Brentwood High School with over 75 percent Latino students, accused some students of alleged connections with the MS-13 gang.

The educators allegedly shared the records of these students with the school resource officers and the students were suspended and some arrested on the grounds of their immigration status and not their alleged links to the gang.

Felix Adeyeye, a spokesperson for Brentwood Union Free School District, said that “it’s preposterous” to think educators share student records with school resource officers. But those arrested were sent to detention centers without their parents' knowledge or even before their charges were proven, the74million reported.

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The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the immigration authorities that sent the three Suffolk County minors to detention in California "under the guise of a “crackdown” on transnational street gangs. Suffolk County doesn’t have a federal immigration enforcement agreement, but attorneys pointed to other avenues for cooperation, including a gang task force and informal deals.

The lawsuit claims that the authorities are "denying them immigration benefits and services to which they are entitled under U.S. law, based on flimsy, unreliable and unsubstantiated allegations."

Like Brentwood, many districts nationwide with the immigration enforcement in schools fear that the ramped up crackdown will adversely affect the undocumented students, about one million undocumented immigrants under the age of 18 live in the U.S. and an estimated 5.5 million have at least one undocumented parent.

Many districts in the country have adopted “sanctuary school” resolutions to help students feel safe from the immigration authorities