California schools preparing students for ICE agents amid Trump's executive order
Schools across Southern California are bracing for federal immigration agents. This comes in the wake of President Donald Trump's newly-signed executive order that allows the agents to enter schools.
While no one knows if, when or where the feds are going to make arrests, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest, says the school district has a professional and ethical obligation to protect the students' right to have access to education.
This week, LAUSD handed out "red cards" to students, which detail people's rights if they were to ever get approached by an immigration officer.
Another school district that's preparing for what may come is the the Santa Ana Unified School District. The Orange County district put together a training video for students and their families to get them ready for any possible run-ins with ICE agents. SAUSD has a protocol in place where the schools will not let the federal agents in without a warrant. The district says it doesn't track students' immigration status, and the Supreme Court ruled in the 1980s that all children, even those who are undocumented, have a right to a public education.
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"We also want to make it clear that schools are not a place for enforcement, that our children are very young, and this could be a very traumatic experience for students," said SAUSD communications director Fermin Leal. "Not only students who might be a target of enforcement, but students who just might witness some of this enforcement."
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