Washington – Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and other House Democrats asked Homeland Security officials to attempt to speak with students at two Los Angeles elementary schools last week.
Garcia and 17 other Democrats signed a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, asking for a briefing on the operation.
“If you make a welfare check while actually targeting deportation, you'll undermine your willingness to work with law enforcement to provoke fear and undermine public trust,” the legislator also said the agency also asked the agency to “relate to a stop to children at risk of public safety.”
Federal agents did not have a judicial arrest warrant at Russell Elementary School and Lillian Street Elementary School near Florence Graham, South Los Angeles without notice last Monday. They asked to talk to five students together, from first to sixth grade. But the school principal denied access.
According to the Los Angeles Federation. Agent Alberto Carvalho said they had a health check there and falsely claimed that the students' families had allowed contact. Carvalho said the agents considered themselves a homeland security investigation, part of U.S. immigration and customs enforcement, but were not unified and unwilling to show official identity.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, told The Times that the agents were checking the well-being of unaccompanied children at the border.
“DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure they are safe and not exploited, abused and trafficked,” she said.
But, according to Garcia's letter, staff from the Los Angeles Unified School District told lawmakers that the four students targeting Russell Elementary School “are not actually unaccompanied minors.”
“This raises serious questions about the authenticity of your department and the safety of our constituents,” the lawmaker wrote. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all students have the right to be publicly educated regardless of their immigration status. You will deny this right if parents and children cannot enter schools without fear of being deported or harassed.”
President Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly claimed that 300,000 immigrant children are “missed, dead, sex slaves or slaves.” The claim appears to be based on a report from the DHS Inspector General’s Office, saying 323,000 children have not appeared in immigration courts since May last year or have not appeared in court since 2019.
“Children who have not appeared in court are considered to be trafficking, exploiting or forced labour at a higher risk.”
Shortly after Trump took office, his administration announced that immigrant agents were free to arrest in places of worship, schools, hospitals and other places previously considered “sensitive.” The new policy repeals the 2011 memorandum, limiting agents arrested at such locations.
The incident in Los Angeles last week has left educators across the country involved in protecting immigrant students.
Garcia of the House Homeland Security Committee said he was trying to determine if this was the first such action by federal immigration agents in any K-12 school in the country. He sees this as an example of similar action and says the community needs to be prepared to respond like the staff at these schools.
Garcia noted that the schools visited by the agents serve low-income families living in some of the country's most immigrant and Latino communities.
“They target vulnerable communities,” he said. “Their permissions they do and have are not real. It's really worrying and people have to know.”
