A Los Angeles superintendent delivered a fiery rebuke of Department of Homeland Security agents who he insisted will remain blocked from attempting to carry out any sort of immigration enforcement activity throughout the district's campuses.
The condemnation came at a news conference Thursday, where Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho reacted to federal agents attempting to question five students at two LA-area campuses on Monday.
He made clear: “I would put my job on the line in the protection of our students and our workforce.”
“As a former undocumented teenager in this country, I cannot renounce, I cannot take off that skin, I cannot shed my experience,” Carvalho said Thursday, as reported by the Los Angeles Daily News.
According to reports, the plainclothes agents falsely claimed they had parent permission to question the students. The school district’s legal team is responding to the incident – part of a nationwide crackdown on immigration enforcement that President Donald Trump's administration announced earlier this year.
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Carvalho shed additional details Thursday about the incident that shook the school community and prompted officials at the two campuses to send out messages to parents.
“I can tell you that four names were declared at one school. One name was declared at the other school,” he said. “At Lillian Elementary, they mentioned a sixth-grade student. At the other school, at Russell Elementary, they mentioned four individuals, ranging in grades between first and fourth grade.”
The superintendent added that he was following federal law by denying the government agents access to school campuses.
“The Constitution of our nation declares under its equal protection clause, that all students, regardless of immigration status, have a right to a free public education,” Carvalho said, according to the LA Daily News. “We are guaranteeing that.”
Trump border czar Tom Homan has vowed to go after undocumented immigrants in schools if deemed a threat to national security.