These Teachers Have Taken On A New Duty In The Trump Era: Watching Out For ICE

They’ve spent years preparing for natural disasters and school shootings. Now, they are ready to do lockdowns in response to immigration raids.

Clemen Avalos, a school psychologist at an elementary school in the San Fernando Valley, is seeing a lot more kids crying at school this year. They are used to seeing preschoolers or kindergarteners struggle to say goodbye to their parents during the first couple of days of school. But now, several weeks into the year, they have older kids coming to their office in tears.

One fifth-grader told Avalos she is scared and wants to go home. Her mom sells tamales on the street, she kept repeating.

Avalos understood how the girl was feeling. As a Mexican American growing up in California during the 1994 fight to deny public services to undocumented immigrants, she remembers hearing, “The migra is going to take you back to Mexico.” Once, when their mom was pulled over, they burst into tears, believing the police would take their mother away and they would never see her again.

“I remember that so vividly as a 37-year-old woman,” they told HuffPost.

Teachers and school staff saw how fearful students were during the first Trump administration — but this time, the anxiety has been inescapable.