AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump returned to the White House this year, pledging to carry out the largest deportation of what he called criminals in American history. In order to meet that goal, federal immigration enforcement sweeps have been carried out in several cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans. The ICE raids have struck fear into many immigrant communities, touching all aspects of life, including the classroom. Seth Lavin has seen the impact of that firsthand as a public school principal in Chicago. Seth, welcome to the program.
SETH LAVIN: Thanks so much for having me on.
RASCOE: Can you start by just telling us what you've been seeing and hearing in the classrooms at your elementary school?
LAVIN: Sure. At my school and really schools all across the city, you see this tremendous and terrifying impact on children and on families. Kids know. They feel it. They see it. They see the fear in their parents. They see the fear in their classmates. A third-grade boy - an 8-year-old - at school, his teacher said he wasn't eating. And he confided in his teacher. He said, well, I don't want to type in my lunch code. You know, that's the system here. You put in the number and get your lunch. He said, I don't want to put in my code. I don't want ICE to know where I am or to know where my family is. And so this third-grader, in his 8-year-old brain, he had this misconception that his lunch code was going to show people where he was, put him at risk, put his family at risk. And so he was sitting at school not eating.
RASCOE: Well, what do you do in a situation like that? How does a school handle that sort of situation and that sort of fear from their students?
LAVIN: That's a really good and really difficult question, and it's a question that our teachers ask. It's a question that our families ask. You know, kids have terror. They have this anxiety. There are kids that are barricading their doors at night, afraid somebody's going to come in. Kids who are at home 'cause their parents don't want to walk them to school, put themselves and their families at risk.
There are kids who don't want to come to school 'cause they're scared that if they come to school, something's going to happen to their parents while they're with us and that when they get out at the end of the day, there's going to be nobody to pick them up and they won't have been able to say goodbye. You know, what do you say to a kid in that situation? You can't say it's all right. It's going to be fine 'cause that isn't all right. So you say I love you. You say I'm going to take care of you. You say we're going to do the best we can, and you try to help them process through it.
You know, at the same time, one thing that's happened all across Chicago is that communities, especially in schools, have really come together to say with all the power that we have, we're not going to let this happen to the people in our schools. And so lots of schools, you see parents banding together to walk other people's kids to school, to buy groceries for families that are scared to leave the house. And that's powerful, and that's beautiful, but it can only do so much.
RASCOE: Were any students or families of your students at your school detained by ICE?
LAVIN: You know, I want to be a little bit careful about specific situations or cases. I don't want to draw attention to anything specifically. But there's 600 schools in Chicago and more than 4,000 people detained. And so yes. There have been impacts at my school, and at every school that I know, there are kids who are living in this fear, and at many, many, many schools, this is a reality. Kids crying in a classroom, kids crying in the cafeteria and saying, what's wrong? What's wrong is that they took my dad. What's wrong is that they took my mom.
RASCOE: I mean, so how has this current political climate changed your daily routine? Like, are there things that you do differently now at the school?
LAVIN: Yeah. I've been a elementary school principal for 11 years. I have never experienced a period in schools like the period that we've been experiencing. We had to ask is recess going to be indoors or outdoors? Are we changing activities or events? We have a Dia de Muertos event - an ofrenda - which we usually do outside. We gather our families outside to honor those who have passed, and we didn't do it outside this year. We said, no, people don't feel safe. They don't feel comfortable standing outside 'cause every time a car turns down the street, some families in the community hold their breath.
We had a Color Run, like, a fundraiser for our eighth-graders on their eighth-grade trip that happened in October, and that's an outside event. Our community's there. Kids run around the school throwing colored powder. As that was happening, in our neighborhood, there were ICE raids happening. There was tear gas in the street. And so we had to try to make this decision about which way are they going to go? Are they coming our way? Are we going to have this event, or are we going to cancel it and send everybody home?
We ended up doing our event, but a school three-quarters of a mile away went on lockdown 'cause ICE was just outside their door with tear gas in the street. And they canceled their Hispanic heritage assembly that was supposed to be after school that day. And so instead of having the Hispanic heritage assembly, they closed up the windows, locked the doors and then after school, sent everybody home.
RASCOE: As a principal, obviously, there's always politics involved in schools. At your school, there may be parents of students who maybe support what President Trump is doing. Maybe - I don't know if you've heard from anyone who's saying, look, he's enforcing the law, fulfilling his mandate. What would you say to those parents?
LAVIN: One of the things that was so shocking about this blitz in Chicago, about the way that it happened - I mean, trucks speeding down the street, people wearing masks and unmarked uniforms breaking car windows with batons and throwing tear gas - even people who say, I'm worried about the border or I'm worried about the distribution of resources, I don't know anybody who looked at that, who saw that with their eyes and said, this is a good thing.
And I think sometimes people have this imagining that an immigration blitz is going to get somebody that they should be scared of or is somehow justice-oriented. But when it's the mom of the kid in your class that you've seen every day for the last 10 years who's just trying to have a good life, walking her kids to school - not 'cause she's trying to take, but because she's trying to build something - when it's that person that's terrified, when it's the kid in your kid's class who doesn't come to school because their parents are afraid to leave home, and when you're seeing on the news tear gas in the street that you drive down every day to go to the store, nobody supports that.
RASCOE: That's Seth Lavin. He's a public school principal in Chicago. Thank you so much for joining us.
LAVIN: Thank you.
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