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It’s a question educators, students and parents in the North Bay — and across the country — keep asking: Will ICE show up at my school?
So far this year, there are no known reports of that happening, either in Sonoma or Napa counties — or elsewhere. But the question is top of mind as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order that changes certain U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidelines to make it easier for immigration authorities to enter schools.
In place since 2011, those rules had required ICE to avoid enforcement actions at certain “sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals and churches.” As of Jan. 20, authorities can now enter these spaces and make arrests.
Law firms across the country have been offering advice to schools, hospitals and churches ever since.
“For many years, schools have enjoyed some protection in accordance with the ‘protected areas’ policy,” which said that the Department of Homeland Security “should not take an enforcement action in or near a location that would restrain access to essential services or engagement in essential activities,” attorneys with the East Coast law firm Shipman & Goodwin posted on their website.
To be clear, ICE still “cannot enter non-public areas of an organization without consent or a valid judicial warrant signed by a federal judge,” they continued, “absent exigent circumstances.”
It’s those last two words — exigent circumstances — that have educators on edge; such circumstances include life-threatening emergencies, or public safety or national security threats. Educators see the term as being in the eye of the beholder, potentially giving ICE broader latitude to conduct enforcement operations on school grounds than they did before Trump’s Inauguration Day.
At Healdsburg High School, principal Tait Danhausen said students are well-aware of the change. More than 65% of students in the Healdsburg Unified School District identify as Latino.
“Am I having conversations with kids I wouldn’t be having if Kamala Harris had been elected? Absolutely,” Danhausen said. As far as his staff and colleagues across the country, “instead of talking about pedagogy, we’re talking about plans focused on the federal purge of immigrants.”
Calistoga Superintendent Audra Pittman echoed Danhausen, noting her school community is experiencing “a sense of fear” and asking “lots of questions regarding what happens if ICE does show up.” Nearly nine of every 10 of the district’s students are Latino.
In the Petaluma City Schools district, where about 33% of the roughly 6,000 students identify as Latino, “We acknowledge that there does seem to be a general fear that has been permeating throughout our communities for many of our families,” said Amy Fadeji, the district’s communications coordinator.
“We are hearing a lot of concern within our community,” echoed James Hodgman, public information officer with the Santa Rosa City Schools district, where 54% of the roughly 16,000 students are Latino. “If you look across the country and see what’s coming out of Washington, there’s reason for worry, concern and anxiety.”
As a result, districts across Napa and Sonoma counties are training their staffs on how to respond.
Pittman says staff at Calistoga schools are to “treat ICE the same way we treat any other visitor on our campus.” That means, an ICE officer would have to sign in at the front office and have a viable reason to be on campus.
“We do not hand over our children or students to anyone that is not on our emergency card list for a family,” Pittman said.
Santa Rosa’s Hodgman said educators there have studied the exigent circumstance issue extensively.
“We have no way of knowing what the federal government or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would use to meet whatever objectives they’re going for by using exigent circumstance,” Hodgman said. “But we would respond on a case-by-case basis.”
Should such an instance occur, Hodgman said the school district would still have to verify that an emergency incident was taking place before letting ICE on a campus.
“While it’s possible anyone could abuse any power, we can push back,” he said. “They have to verify there’s an exigent circumstance. We’re not just going to roll out the red carpet for them.”
What’s most important, educators say, is making sure students feel safe on campus and that their families feel empowered to send them to school.
The impact of the Trump policies on school attendance remains to be seen.
On Monday, Feb. 3, 66.3% of Calistoga Elementary School students were in attendance while just 42.4% of the district’s junior and senior high students attended school. Altogether, the district serves about 800 students; about 88% are Latino. However, Pittman says the low attendance coincided with the Bay Area “Day Without Immigrants” protest during which many students chose not to attend school while many businesses remained closed for the day.
Windsor Unified School District has seen a significant increase in absences, too. On Jan. 27, the Monday after inauguration 10% of the district’s student population — nearly 500 of the district’s 4,600 students — were absent from school. The following Monday, the number of absent students jumped to 1,018. Roughly 57% of the student population identifies as Latino.
Windsor Unified School District Coordinator of District Communications Heather Bailey added caveats to the data, saying that some of the data includes partial absences for students at Brooks and Mattie Washburn Elementary Schools. She also added that elementary school attendance tends to drop during rainy days.
In Santa Rosa, despite the anxiety, Hodgman says he wasn’t aware of any “significant dips” in attendance across Santa Rosa City Schools.
Petaluma City Schools reported regular attendance for its district, hovering between 84% and 93% for the first week of February.
And at Healdsburg High School, Danhausen says he is aware of just one student who is missing school out of fear of the executive order.
Even one is too many, he said “How can I get you back to school? he asked. “How can I make it safe?”
Besides monitoring attendance, several school districts in Sonoma and Napa counties have declared their districts ‘safe havens,’ reaffirming their commitment to maintaining safety for all students.
Many also have sent messages to parents, caregivers and students explaining that federal law requires that schools provide a “learning environment free from discrimination, harassment, bullying, violence and intimidation,” while adding that the new federal order has created an “unclear” environment for schools.
The messages also offer suggested to-do steps for families who could be affected by immigration enforcement, including making a family emergency plan, identifying who could take care of children if a parent is detained and updating a child’s school emergency contact information.
Windsor Unified is hosting Zoom meetings for families with a local immigration attorney so families can understand their rights. Other districts have created networks of community members that immigrant families can turn to, should they need information and assistance.
Healdsburg’s Danhausen said that the extended outreach to families is important.
“The vast majority of our students are not in danger,” he conceded. “But for some kids, this could be a big deal. Many more kids have family members this could affect.”
Staff writers Tarini Mehta and Amelia Richardson contributed reporting.
Amie Windsor is the Community Journalism Team Lead with The Press Democrat. She can be reached at amie.windsor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5218.
