ICE activity affecting attendance

Aggressive immigration enforcement by ICE and Border Patrol is causing stress, anxiety, and low attendance in area high schools.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had an uptake in raids around America, including Portland. The community in the area has been affected by these raids as families live in growing fear for their own and their loved ones’ safety. The families’ fear reaches to the students, causing them to have just as much fear for safety. Students report about their consistent anxiety of ICE potentially racially profiling them or their loved ones. 

“ICE is getting out of control,” said freshman Jacky Brambora. “I shouldn’t have to live in fear for me and my family’s safety.”

Taking in consideration of the fear and anxiety spread across the community, schools have implemented protocols to be taught to the staff members of the school. This doesn’t limit to high schools as it also branches out to elementary and middle schools, and even colleges or universities are acting upon it.

DDHS has their own protocols. “CLEAR” stands for Count, Location, Equipment, Activity, Report. The protocol was taught to all the staff in the school so they are prepared for reporting any situation that involves ICE being on or around the campus. The other is an agreement that there shall be no discrimination against anyone, no matter a person’s “perceived or actual race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, or immigration status.” According to a teachers’ union Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Action Response to ICE: “ICE agents may not enter school property without a judicial warrant, proper legal credentials and providing identification documents that match.” 

“I think the biggest way ICE is affecting families and students is built on fear,” said Grow Your Own Pathway Navigator Andreina Velasco.

 Velasco has noticed students and families in her community are starting to live in more fear even when doing basic human necessities. If families don’t feel safe to leave their house, that will affect students one way or another, not only in school but in their personal lives as well. 

Since some students are in fear and can not speak up for themselves, other students decided to stand for them and speak out. Latino Student Union organized a walkout on Feb. 6 to spread awareness about the multiple cases of people being deported and harassed by ICE and what harm it brings to the school community. Over eight hundred students participated. 

After the walkout, the students who participated received backlash online. On the platform “X” formally known as “twitter”, people were threatening the students and threatening violence on everyone who participated. One comment on X stated that “DDHS deserves to be raided.”

ICE isn’t only affecting DDHS. According to Fox12 in November, two schools, Caesar Chavez School and George Middle School, both in Portland, were put into secures because of the ICE activity around the area. As a result, the Cesar Chavez community of over 100 members all lined up around the school before pickup as a way to protect and defend students, staff, and parents from ICE agents or other kinds of immigration authorities. 

As for students, “the national average of chronic absenteeism is 22%; Oregon’s rate is  almost 34%” according to The Oregonian.  

“ICE presence in our local community has affected students’ attendance in my class,”  Latinx Studies class teacher Julia Toscano said. “I have had students specifically tell me that is why they did not show up to class.”