Community patrols drive ICE out of City Heights school parking lot
Parents, teachers and community members denounced ICE's presence around schools and elsewhere in the neighborhood.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Maya Srikrishnan
Immigration officials planning to make arrests in City Heights early Friday morning left the area after community patrols noticed their cars and followed them to an elementary school.
Members of City Heights Defense Committee and Unión del Barrio were patrolling the area when they noticed several cars that had key features linking them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including car color, make and model, dark window tinting and additional technology like small cameras at the front of the cars, according to several people present.
“Nosotros, desde el primer día de clases que se inició, nos preocupó mucho que fueran a detener gente en las escuelas y nos dedicamos desde el primer día a patrullar las escuelas,” said Agustín Arreola Amador, a member of City Heights Defense Committee who was patrolling Friday morning. We, since the first day of classes started, were very worried that they would detain people at schools, and we dedicated ourselves since the first day to patrol the schools.
The patrols followed two SUVs, one gray and one blue, to the parking lot of Herbert Ibarra Elementary School, according to video footage from Unión del Barrio. The people inside the blue SUV placed a sunshade behind the windshield by the time the patrols caught up with them.
Several community members got out of their cars to film and alert neighbors via a megaphone, yelling that ICE was in the area. The two ICE cars quickly pulled out of their parking spots and left the area. The blue SUV still had the sunshade covering the windshield as the driver pulled onto the street and away from the school.
“We thought that that was reckless endangerment or reckless driving and endangerment of people on the streets,” said Benjamin Prado, a member of Unión del Barrio who was present that morning.
“I'm sure any other individual doing that would be pulled over immediately, would be cited, and their driving privileges would be revoked,” Prado later added.
Patrick Divver, director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for the ICE San Diego Field Office said that the agency didn't make any arrests at the school. He did not address the sunshade on the windshield.
“At no time did ICE conduct enforcement activity on school grounds, nor did any officer exit their vehicle while briefly in the parking lot. Any suggestion otherwise is completely false,” Divver said in an emailed statement.
Divver said that ICE officers were planning to make arrests in City Heights and pulled into the “first available parking lot” to avoid the activists who had spotted them.
“The interference of activists in law enforcement operations creates unnecessary risks to themselves, the community, and our officers,” Divver's statement continued.
Parents, teachers and community members gathered outside the school on Friday afternoon to denounce ICE's presence there and in the community. Immigration officials have made several arrests of parents dropping off or picking up their children from school since classes resumed.
“I am appalled by the ICE terror we are seeing around, and now on, actual school campuses,” said Erendira Ramirez, whose children attend San Diego Unified schools. “All parents, regardless of citizenship status, have the right to travel to and from school with dignity and safety.”
Ramirez called on district leadership, parents and teachers to come together to create safe zones around schools.
“This district can no longer stay silent. They cannot hide behind their letter, behind their words and their rhetoric,”said Marysol Duran, a member of the Association of Raza Educators. “We need action. We demand action. We deserve action. We don't need your outrage. We need action.”
The San Diego Unified School District did not respond to a request for comment. The district held a press conference earlier this month where the superintendent said schools and their surrounding areas should be off limits to ICE.
Maria Romero, who is part of the City Heights Defense Committee, said that she's concerned about the way that immigration arrests are affecting children's rights.
“El gobierno está transgrediendo brutalmente el derecho a la felicidad a los niños,” Romero said. The government is brutally violating children's right to happiness.
Unión del Barrio has helped neighbors in many areas, including City Heights, learn how to patrol the way that community members were doing on Friday morning.
“This strategy has always been with the objective of empowering our communities to be able to defend our community from a family separation,” Prado said. “It's clearly a necessity.”
Adriana Jasso, secretary general of Unión del Barrio, pointed out that ICE will soon have more money to work with when the new federal fiscal year begins in October because of a bill recently passed by Congress.
“Our communities cannot and will not continue to be the target of a violent, systematic regime that hopes and wants for all of us to be fearful,” Jasso said. “We are not fearful. We will fight back. We will organize.”
