Linda Vista Parent Arrested by ICE While Waiting to Pick Up Child from School

On Thursday, San Diego Unified’s Linda Vista Elementary became the latest local school community hit hard by a targeted ICE arrest. At around 3:10 p.m., minutes before school let out, immigration agents pulled up in an unmarked van and arrested a father waiting near the school to pick up his child, according to district officials. The student’s mother was later called to come pick up their waiting child.

During a Friday morning press conference at the school, San Diego Unified Superintendent Fabiola Bagula could barely conceal her disgust at the incident, which she said struck fear into the community.

“These are three-year-old to 11-year-old children – a child that did not get picked up from school by their parents. This is traumatic. There’s a reason why those people are wearing masks (and it’s) because they know it’s wrong to do,” Bagula said. “There may be a lot of debates about immigration reform, but there should be no debate that this kind of tactic is inhumane.”

Board President Cody Petterson echoed Bagula’s sentiments, calling the agents “masked paramilitary forces terrorizing families.”

“You should not be abducted as you’re waiting for a child to come out of school. It doesn’t matter, honestly, where you are on the political spectrum. No one thinks that’s a good thing,” Petterson said.

The anxiety inspired by these raids is especially troubling to school leaders because of the measurable impact they can have on things like attendance. A recent Stanford study found that after the Central Valley was hit with sustained ICE raids, student absences at nearby schools jumped by 22 percent. That’s a frightening statistic given how big an impact student attendance has on performance and school funding.

The growing handful of incidents like this one also highlights a basic tension: while educators and school officials want to keep students and their families safe, there’s not much they can actually do. 

San Diego Unified, like many other districts in the county, has adopted policies to respond to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They mostly boil down to ensuring ICE agents have a valid warrant should they try to enter a school. That does nothing to protect parents waiting around the corner to pick up their child, or arriving at school to drop them off. 

But it doesn’t stop educators from wanting to do more, Bagula said after the press conference.

“I know we have beautiful educators that have actually told me, ‘I’ll go out and fight them.’ I’m like, ‘Please do not, because then you will be in trouble as well.’ We don’t want that,” Bagula told me. “I can’t advise anyone to break the law or put themselves in danger, and then I’m also an educator, and I know I would.”

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