Immigration coverage: What to know
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As parents scramble to drop off students at an Eastside high school, one mother typically arrives well before the first bell.
Mia Gomez scans the blocks around the campus, greeting students and parents she recognizes while keeping watch. Since before dawn, she’s been checking social media for reports of immigration enforcement activity nearby.
(Mia Gomez is a pseudonym. Boyle Heights Beat is changing her name to protect her from potential retaliation or immigration enforcement.)
With a whistle at the ready, she stands alert and prepared to notify the mostly Latino school community of approaching immigration agents.
“I see the need,” Gomez said. “And as a parent, you cannot just cross your arms and just sit down, because I know that we can make a difference.”
Parents like Gomez are part of a wider network of volunteers patrolling Eastside schools in response to ramped-up immigration enforcement operations. Along with educators and students, they’ve formed grassroots “sanctuary teams” to protect their community and help students feel safe traveling to and from school. The volunteers patrol nearby intersections and offer reassurance during a tense time for undocumented or mixed-status families.
Most people patrolling wear red vests to make themselves visible. But Gomez maintains a lower profile in her regular clothing. For her, this work carries an added risk: like many of the families threatened with deportation whom she works to protect, she, too, is undocumented.
“I have to do it, not only for myself and my family, but because it’s affecting us all,” Gomez said.
Building a sanctuary team
Across Los Angeles, other schools have launched similar efforts, some with support from groups like Unión del Barrio, the Association of Raza Educators, and members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). These organizations have offered trainings on how to protect students, faculty, staff and families from immigration enforcement actions, including guidance on starting sanctuary teams and connecting schools to resources to help monitor for enforcement.
At Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, history teacher Gillian Russom saw how the surge in immigration raids had led to higher levels of anxiety and a drop in attendance.
“It’s obviously affecting student attendance because they’re worried about whether if they really are safe coming to school,” Russom said, pointing out that the recent back-to-school night saw many student and parent absences. “It’s an issue affecting our school in multiple ways.”
Over the summer, she and her colleagues had formed a sanctuary committee made up of educators, parents, students and community members to address how to keep their community safe.
By August, volunteers were patrolling the campus, distributing Know Your Rights cards and coordinating with the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network to monitor ICE activity and train parents to respond if agents appear nearby.
Roosevelt High social studies teacher Thalia Cataño said educators play a key role in these efforts.
“We are some of the first people that our students and our families come to when something has happened; when someone has been detained, when there’s questions about safety and going to work or even dropping students off,” she said.
Students, too, have joined the effort. Senior Prisila Hernandez, who organizes through Roosevelt’s social justice club, joined her school’s sanctuary committee to help her peers stay informed.
“There are a lot of students in my classes who are terrified about the whole situation. [Students] who migrated to this country are also terrified, but they still come to school…” Hernandez said. “I think it’s important for everybody to know and to be informed of the situation and what they can do to fight against it.”
Similar teams have emerged at Hollenbeck Middle School and Felicitas & Gonzalo Mendez High School.
At Hollenbeck Middle School, librarian Sharon Nicholls said her team is preparing parents and staff for what to do before, during and after an ICE raid. She sees the emotional impact daily.
“I was teaching poetry to kids and it was smattered all over their poetry,” she said. “It was one poem after another, describing ICE in Los Angeles. I didn’t prompt it; they just needed to share it. Every kid feels it and every kid knows it.”
At Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School, students have recently joined forces with educators and parents to discuss immigration protocols, according to community school coordinator Emily Grijalva.
The school has also been working with Proyecto Pastoral, an immigrant rights and women’s advocacy group across the street. Proyecto Pastoral leads the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network, which monitors enforcement activity and alerts schools when needed.
At the school, a buzzer wired to the front door works as an extra buffer to quietly alert administrators in the event immigration enforcement agents try to access the school.
Boyle Heights Beat reached out to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security about their protocol for entering schools but did not receive a response.
Expanding on district resources
The Los Unified School District does not ask students about their immigration status, but immigrant rights groups estimate that about 1 in 5 students, or 76,000, in the district come from mixed-status families, according to CalMatters.
A spokesperson confirmed the district isn’t directly involved in organizing the sanctuary teams but said it has formed communication lines with various advocacy groups and established rapid response protocols for potential immigration enforcement activity near schools. In addition, LAUSD has expanded Know Your Rights workshops, resource guides for mixed-status families and bus services.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has been largely outspoken about protecting students and their families since the ICE raids began.
“I hope people hear that our school system has protected its community of learners and that we are safe spaces, are a welcoming district, and that every parent should feel safe in bringing their children to school,” Carvalho said at the start of the school year during a press conference.
Still, educators like Russom say gaps remain – particularly in supporting students outside of school hours.
“I think there’s more of a sense [of fear] since the summer invasion of LA that there isn’t really anyone else protecting us. We have to step up and try to protect our communities ourselves,” Russom said.
Cataño and other teachers hope to see sanctuary teams grow on the Eastside and beyond.
“The goal is that every school site has a sanctuary team and a sanctuary safety plan in place,” Cataño said, urging schools to organize themselves at the site level.
Taking a stand
That grassroots organizing at school sites depends on volunteers willing to show up. For Gomez, even with the risks she faces as an undocumented person, staying away from the front lines isn’t an option.
She’s committed to protecting others, even as she’s had to plan for the possibility of deportation to Mexico. Her husband and children worry about her whenever she goes out.
“They tell me they worry, but I tell them, ‘We cannot live in fear. We can’t. Because eventually, it’s going to affect you guys,’” Gomez said, noting that her family, who all have U.S. citizenship, may still be targeted because of their appearance and the color of their skin.
Gomez hopes her presence every morning sends a message to the young people on their way to school — and to her own children
“I have to do it for my kids,” she said. “To show them how to have courage and get up and fight as much as we can with the resources and support we have.”