As President Donald Trump intensifies his efforts on immigration enforcement, the Los Angeles Unified School District is taking steps to safeguard immigrant families who may be at risk of deportation.
The district recently relaunched a 2017 initiative aimed at providing students, families, and educators with training and information to protect their communities, regardless of their immigration status.
The LA Unified 2025: We Are One campaign formalizes the district’s commitment “to cultivate welcoming learning environments for all students,” according to its website, which includes a pool of resources from family preparedness plans to “Know Your Rights” webinars in English and Spanish.
The effort comes as the Trump administration announced Tuesday that it would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to conduct arrests in sensitive areas such as schools and churches, dismantling policies dating back to 2011. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Dr. Rocio Rivas, LAUSD School Board member representing many Eastside schools in District 2, denounced the directive.
“Allowing arrests in these spaces is a cruel decision that shatters trust, disrupts lives and undermines the very values of dignity, compassion, and community that we should strive to protect,” she said.
L.A. Unified recently reaffirmed its status as a ‘sanctuary district,’ designating schools as safe zones for families facing deportation, while the city of Los Angeles passed an ordinance blocking city resources from aiding federal immigration enforcement. Additionally, California law, supported by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s guidance, protects schools from allowing immigration agents without a judicial warrant. Trump has repeatedly threatened to target sanctuary cities that don’t comply with his deportation plans.
In an email to Boyle Heights Beat, a spokesperson for L.A. Unified said the district was providing resources for faculty and administration on how to respond if ICE agents engaged with staff on campus. The district is “compelled by legal, professional, and moral obligations to protect the legal and privacy rights of its students and employees, and to ensure all students’ constitutional right to a public education,” the spokesperson statement read. The district also recently published training for staff and administration.
This week schools across the district began distributing “red cards” by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, also known as “Know Your Rights” cards, to help people assert their rights and defend themselves in the face of ICE agent encounters.
In an interview with NBC, L.A. Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said his district was working to provide educators and administrators with the training and resources they need and stressed that LAUSD schools will remain a sanctuary for all students.
“We shall not allow a federal entity to go into our schools to take action specific to immigration,” Carvalho said. “I have a moral and professional responsibility to care for these kids and their families.”
Maria Miranda, the United Teachers Los Angeles’ Elementary Vice President, said the union has been working to advocate and support the families of immigrant students and pass out materials to school sites to make immigrant students feel more welcome.
“We know that we have to take action, that we need to organize, that we need to empower folks by letting them know what their rights are. We feel that it’s time to come together and support each other and find a way to ensure that we don’t lose hope,” Miranda said.
“We’re ready to organize and fight back.”