WASHINGTON — Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and other House Democrats are demanding that Department of Homeland Security officials justify their attempts last week to speak with students at two Los Angeles elementary schools.
Garcia and 17 other Democrats signed a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, requesting a briefing about the operation.
“If you falsely claim to be conducting welfare checks while actually targeting children for deportation, you undermine willingness to cooperate with law enforcement, provoke fear, and undermine public trust,” the lawmakers wrote, also demanding that the agency “desist from immigration enforcement activity” involving children who do not pose a public safety threat.
Federal agents showed up last Monday unannounced and without a judicial warrant at Russell Elementary and at Lillian Street Elementary in the Florence-Graham neighborhood of South Los Angeles. They asked to speak with five students collectively, ranging from first-graders to sixth-graders. But school principals denied access.
According to L.A. Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho, the agents said they were there to perform wellness checks and falsely claimed the students’ families had given permission for the contact. The agents identified themselves as being with Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but were not in uniform and were reluctant to show official identification, Carvalho said.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told The Times that the agents were checking on the well-being of children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.
“DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked,” she said.
But according to Garcia’s letter, L.A. Unified School District staff informed lawmakers that the four students targeted at Russell Elementary “were not, in fact, unaccompanied minors.”
“This raises serious questions about the truthfulness of your Department, and the safety of our constituents,” the lawmakers wrote. “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that all students have a right to a public education, no matter their immigration status. If parents and children cannot access schools without fear of deportation or harassment, you deny that right.”
President Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly claimed that more than 300,000 migrant children are “missing, dead, sex slaves or slaves.” The claim appears to be based on a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General stating that 323,000 children either had not been served notices to appear in immigration court as of last May or had failed to appear for their hearings since 2019.
The report said children “who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
Shortly after Trump took office, his administration declared that immigration agents are free to make arrests in places of worship, schools, hospitals and other locations that were previously considered “sensitive.” The new policy rescinded a 2011 memo restricting agents from making arrests in such locations.
The incidents last week in Los Angeles left educators across the country on edge about protecting immigrant students.
Garcia, who is on the House Homeland Security committee, said he is trying to determine whether it was the first such operation by federal immigration agents at any K-12 schools in the country. He believes it was an example of similar actions to come and said that communities need to be prepared to respond as the staff of these schools did.
Garcia noted that the schools that agents visited serve low-income families who live in neighborhoods with some of the highest immigrant and Latino populations in the country.
“They’re targeting vulnerable communities,” he said. “They’re not being truthful about what they’re doing and permissions that they have. That’s really concerning and has got to be known to people.”
