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A junior at Benito Juarez High School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood was detained by federal immigration agents for several hours Thursday while at the scene of a Little Village protest, according to local elected officials.
A second Juarez student was briefly detained at the same protest and went to the school afterwards, but then went home, said Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who held a press conference to denounce the arrests.
Both of the students are U.S. citizens and have been released, the alderman said. The two students’ names have not been released.
“This is not even about immigration,” Sigcho-Lopez said during the press conference, which he held outside the high school. “This is about crushing dissent.” He added that the immigration agents were “terrorists coming and attacking our neighbors because of how we look.”
The arrests came on the same day some Chicago school board members called on CPS to provide virtual learning due to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s aggressive presence in the city. But CPS says it cannot offer such an option unless the Gov. JB Pritzker declares a state of emergency.
Intensifying federal immigration arrests and activity in Chicago over the past month have affected school age children and their families. School staffers have reported ICE activity near schools, including the deployment of tear gas, prompting an outcry from the mayor and local leaders. Some families, staff, and elected officials say they’ve heard that attendance has dropped at some schools due to fears of ICE enforcement during pickup and dropoff.
Data obtained by Chalkbeat shows attendance from the first month of school was the same across the city as the same time period last year, at about 92%. But more neighborhoods are seeing attendance dip compared with last year, including neighborhoods that are heavily Hispanic and have many immigrants. The district has not yet provided data for the second month of school, when ICE activity grew more intense.
Community organizations as well as elected officials have also organized school patrols to track ICE activity and report it to families.
The arrests apparently happened at the scene of a protest against federal immigration enforcement in Little Village, a heavily Mexican and immigrant neighborhood, near 27th and Whipple streets, where immigration agents carried out arrests Wednesday, according to Sigcho-Lopez and his staffer.
U.S. Border Patrol agents were accused of deploying tear gas at the Thursday morning protest in violation of a federal judge’s order, the Tribune reported, which also reported that a 16-year-old Juarez student was arrested at the scene.
A video taken by a staffer for Sigcho-Lopez shows U.S. Border Patrol agents arresting a person whom the staffer identified as one of the two Juarez students detained by federal agents.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tanya Roman, a spokesperson for ICE, which is a separate agency, said ICE agents were not involved.
CPS did not comment. But a district spokesperson forwarded a letter to reporters from Juarez’s principal, Juan Carlos Ocon, who said that “a member of our school community was impacted” by nearby federal enforcement activity, and that the incident did not happen on school grounds. Ocon’s statement did not mention a second student being detained.
It’s unclear what time Thursday morning the arrests happened, but the video shot by Sigcho-Lopez’s staff was taken at around 10 a.m., according to a time stamp. Sigcho-Lopez said the students were on their way to school, and his staffer said it’s possible the kids stopped to participate in the protest.
A separate Instagram video circulating online shows multiple federal agents firing objects toward a crowd of people in an unknown location, then pulling a young person to the ground and handcuffing him. The Instagram account identified the person as a Juarez student. The person taking the video repeatedly yelled at the agents and said, “He’s a kid!” Later, the person asked, “What are y’all arresting him for? What did he do?”
A total of four Juarez students were at the scene of the protest, and two who were not arrested went to school afterwards, Sigcho-Lopez said.
In his email, Ocon wrote the school has mental health resources available for students, and reminded families that schools do not allow federal agents to enter school without a criminal warrant signed by a federal judge.
“I know this situation has created many fears and concerns in our community, and I want to emphasize that we are taking this situation extremely seriously,” Ocon wrote.
Juarez teacher Mary Winfield said one of the arrested students is a junior who is committed to his school work. While he was not arrested on school grounds, the experience will traumatize the student and spread “through the school community,” she said.
“Students share photos, students share texts, they talk, they know what’s going on,” Winfield said. “It impacts their lives, filling them with stress and it makes my job harder … it makes learning nearly impossible.”
Multiple elected officials, including two school board members, denounced the arrests and broader immigration enforcement at Thursday’s press conference.
Emma Lozano, an appointed member of the Chicago Board of Education who represents the Pilsen neighborhood where Juarez is located, said she wants to see local and state authorities arrest federal immigration agents for what she described as unlawful enforcement activity.
“There is no due process,” Lozano said. “We have U.S. citizens being picked up, we have minors being picked up, so this is absolutely wrong.”
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
