Immigration officers arrested a teacher early Wednesday in Chicago after chasing her into the grounds of a private preschool and grabbing her as parents and students looked on, according to a local official, witnesses and video footage of the incident.
Several parents said they were waiting to drop off their children around 7 a.m. at Rayito de Sol, a Spanish immersion day care and school, when they saw armed officers in black vests with the words “POLICE ICE” run behind the woman and into the lobby of the building. Witnesses and school employees told The Washington Post that they thought the school was under attack and scrambled into rooms and vehicles outside in search of safety.
The agents dragged the woman outside as she yelled, “Tengo papeles!” or “I have papers.”
The arrest appears to be one of the first instances during Trump’s second administration in which immigration officers entered school grounds to make an arrest. During the Biden and Obama administrations, schools were considered “sensitive locations,” and agents were barred from entering with few exceptions. But the Trump administration eliminated those policies in January, allowing agents to make arrests at schools, hospitals and churches. There have been few such arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security has said it does not plan to raid or target schools.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin disputed that the woman was arrested inside the school, saying she was detained in “a vestibule.” The outer doors to the school are open to the public, but to enter through a second set of double doors, staff must buzz in parents and faculty after verifying their identity. Bystander video of the arrest shows agents in both the lobby area and farther inside the school.
Posted by John3262005