Schools Gear Up for a Threat to Immigrant Children

Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at how the city’s public school system is preparing for the ways President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to deport immigrants could affect students.

Stephanie Lukas, the principal of Public School 51 in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, read the email from the chief operating officer of the New York City school system. Lukas’s reaction: Nothing new here.

The email, sent to school principals across the city last month, told them what to do if federal immigration agents showed up. First, it said, call a lawyer for the school system. It also said to “wait for further instructions.”

And to ask the agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to wait outside the school.

“It felt like continuing what we’re doing,” Lukas said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education echoed that idea: “Nothing has changed in terms of how we operate,” the spokeswoman, Nicole Brownstein, said. “We do not permit non-N.Y.C. law enforcement agents, including ICE, to enter schools except when absolutely required by law.”

Still, the memo reflected the anxiety about President-elect Donald Trump’s threats against immigrants and how efforts to deport them could disrupt schools that have absorbed migrant children in the past few years. As my colleague Dana Goldstein wrote last week, those schools face a new challenge as Trump’s inauguration looms — winning over parents so frightened by possible deportation that they hesitate to let their children out of their sight for the hours the children would be in class.

“We’ve been living with these families,” Lukas said. “We’ve done lots and lots to make them feel safe and supported.” Whatever happens after Trump is inaugurated next week is “just the next chapter,” she said.

As for the steps principals are to follow if immigration agents show up at their schools, the memo — from Emma Vadehra, who is a deputy chancellor as well as the school system’s chief operating officer — said that “we hope using this protocol will never be necessary.” Still, Monica Tulchinsky, the senior director of programs for the New York Immigration Coalition, which represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups across New York State, said the protocol was “the correct one.”

“No one wants a parent to fear picking up their child at school because ICE could be waiting there,” she added. “No one wants young children making their way alone because their parents are too afraid to pick them up.”

The memo is not the only restatement of policies that already guide the city’s public schools. The Panel for Education Policy, the 24-member committee that advises the schools chancellor, is preparing a resolution to “republicize that we have all of these policies,” said Naveed Hasan, a panel member who is drafting the resolution. He said it would reiterate that “state and city laws will determine how the system will respond when requested by federal authorities to enforce federal immigration law.”

“The crux is there need to be judicial warrants for individual cases,” he added. “There can’t be a blanket sweep — ‘Give us all the immigrants.’ That’s not how things work.” Hasan, whose family immigrated from Pakistan in the 1980s and who has two children in the school system, expects the resolution to pass when it comes up for a vote next week.

Immigrants’ children are a benefit to the school system, Hasan said: They “are keeping seats occupied.”

“They are the only reason why we have stable and slightly increased enrollments,” he said. “They are why we are not closing schools that are severely underenrolled.”

The memo and the resolution come as Mayor Eric Adams and the president-elect make overtures to each other. Last month, after meeting with Thomas Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” Adams repeated his intention to help federal immigration authorities detain some immigrants, which local sanctuary laws prevent the city from doing. Trump, who will be the first president to have been sentenced as a felon when he takes office next week, later said that he would consider pardoning Adams, a Democrat who is the first mayor of New York City to be indicted on corruption charges.

The school system has arranged online information sessions for administrators who worry that students will be deported once the new administration takes office. Lukas attended one such session last week. Brownstein, the spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said that similar training sessions for guidance counselors, social workers and other staff members were in the works.

Officially, school administrators do not know which students immigration agents might want to talk to. Vadehra, the deputy chancellor who sent the memo to principals, noted that the school system does not ask families about their immigration status. Her memo also said that if a school employee had information about that, it “may not be entered in any school records and must be kept confidential.”

For Lukas, that means that she cannot say for sure how many migrant children are enrolled at P.S. 51 — only that there has been a surge in enrollment. She said that total enrollment was up from roughly 430 when the coronavirus pandemic ended. “Now, with the new arrivals, we’re at 470,” she said.

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METROPOLITAN diary

‘Misty’

Dear Diary:

I walked to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade at the end of a long week. I planned to go for a run after taking in the view for a few minutes.

Golden shadows danced tenderly against the red brick that flanks one side of the ramp down. Tree branches and falling leaves were momentarily etched by orange rays. The sky was pink and glorious.

Two young men set up their saxophone, electric guitar and small speaker. The music started so gently: “Misty.”

The saxophone carried the melody. I settled against the fence, my back to the skyline, and watched, an audience of one.

A man in a red flannel shirt slowed to a stop. His hair, brownish and thinning, shone in the setting sun. His face softened as the music played. He caught my eye with a quick smile and settled against the fence a few yards away.

We stood and listened together, taking in the dying leaves on the trees, the people of New York and the beautiful music.

When the song ended, he clapped first, and then I joined in. The musicians nodded. A prickling of tears in my eyes, which had begun at the start of the song, grew as I wondered what to do next.

The man approached the musicians. I turned away and started my jog. I thought about my endless nights alone in my room.

A few minutes later, I saw the man who had been listening to the music walking in my direction with a grinning woman at his side.