Per Juan Perez Jr. of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Public School system  is taking action against the federal governments broadened measures in detaining illegal immigrants. While no ICE agents have yet attempted to detain any students or parents in the school area, many are still  worried after some of the recent news from the White House. Protests last week targeted these policies by Trump’s cabinet and a signifiant amount of Latino students were out of school last Thursday either for fear, anger, or both according to the Tribune.  In response to this, CPS wants to ensure their students that they can feel safe and secure and not targeted. They contacted principals to let them know that any ICE agent wishing to enter a district building had to have a warrant with him and also urged parents to update emergency contact forms in the case of them or their child being detained by agents. The CPS has asserted that they are not there to provide assistance to federal officials in their business, especially since that business would be harmful to their students. The districts message was, “To be very clear, CPS does not provide assistance to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the enforcement of federal civil immigration law.” In the case of an agent coming to the school the guidelines ask that they be told to wait outside while the administration deals with the Law department.

To some this seems like an extreme measure and maybe not necessary due to the lack of agents showing up at schools yet. However, it’s easy to shrug off these things when you don’t have to go through them, and for the thousands of Latino students and parents in CPS schools the recent news from Washington has been understandably very alarming.  Chicago Public School system’s rationale was to have their schools taking the steps to make sure their kids and parents feel safe.

The opinions of this post are Jake Morask’s and do not reflect the Laura Law Office in its entirety