Students from across Los Angeles, including the Eastside, faced the Los Angeles Unified School District board on Tuesday to demand immigrant students be protected from federal immigration agents.
About a dozen students spoke during the public comment portion of the regular board meeting where they called for programs protecting Black, undocumented, and queer students.
The students’ demands come amid a wave of student organizing after President Donald Trump ended policies that prevented immigration officers from arresting immigrants at sensitive locations like schools and churches. Several walkouts occurred in February, with students calling for transparency on protocols if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents enter schools.
Several students with the youth-led organization Students Deserve called on the board to bring back race as a factor for the Black Student Achievement Plan, which is meant to address longstanding educational disparities between Black students and their non-Black peers.
Other students like Chastity Collado, a student at Garfield Senior High School, called on the district to implement Dream Centers across all LAUSD campuses. Dream Centers provide resources to students who are undocumented and who come from mixed-status families.
“Recent ICE raids have instilled fear among our undocumented classmates, disrupting their sense of safety and belonging. No student should have to choose between their education and their family’s security,” Collado said.
Collado spoke of the history of the 1968 East L.A. Walkouts and of students who walked out of Garfield High in 2019 to advocate for the rights of DACA recipients.
“Our predecessors taught us that change is born from action. The students of 1968 and 2019 didn’t wait for permission to demand justice. They led the charge. Now it’s our turn to continue that legacy,” Collado said.
While Woodrow Wilson High is home to a Dream Center, it does not appear these services are available across campuses.
Britt Vaughan, an LAUSD spokesperson, said Dream Centers at district schools were started by students and are student-led. “Students interested in starting a Dream Center at their school should work with the schools directly,” Vaughan said.
LAUSD board member Rocío Rivas, who represents parts of Central and East L.A., said she supports “the power of student organizing in protecting immigrant families.”
“Dream Centers are a vital resource in ensuring immigrant students and their families feel supported, connected, and at home in LAUSD,” Rivas said in a statement. “I remain committed to strengthening these spaces and advocating for what’s needed to sustain and expand them so every student, regardless of status, has the opportunity to thrive.”
LAUSD has reaffirmed its sanctuary status and provided resources for faculty and administration on how to respond if ICE agents engaged with staff on campus.
A district bulletin issued in December notes that “an administrative ICE warrant, for instance, does NOT grant an immigration officer any special power to compel a school official to cooperate, access school grounds, or interview a student.”
Schools across the district have also distributed “red cards” by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, also known as “Know Your Rights” cards, to help people assert their rights.
Still, these measures have not eased student fears.
Chicuei Ehecatl, a senior at Theodore Roosevelt High School, addressed the board on Tuesday and said “Students worry more about ICE than about their exams.”
“Our students must now wonder whether they will be taken from within the very walls of their schools,” Ehecatl said. (Ehecatl is a Boyle Heights Beat youth reporter).
“It is a distraction so powerful that no student can be expected to learn when the possibility of being ripped from your families lingers in your minds,” Ehecatl added.
Among those in attendance were students from Woodrow Wilson High, who plan on addressing the LAUSD board in April.
