The soon-to-be Maywood Academy High School graduates processed, beaming, into an auditorium at East Los Angeles College to a recording of Pomp and Circumstance.
The crowd pledged allegiance to the flag. The name of each student joining the U.S. armed forces was read aloud to applause. Cheers erupted when the student singing the national anthem hit extra high notes for “the rockets red glare” and “land of the free.”
The vocalist, senior Maria Llamas, who also served as ceremony co-host, spoke in Spanish while her counterpart spoke in English. Noisemakers and shouts greeted the announcement of each graduate’s name. And, those assembled cheered for more than 10 seconds after L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho described the tableau before him:
“From where I stand you are a perfect pixelation of America: the Black, the brown, the Christian, the Muslim, the native-born, and yes, the powerful immigrant.”
The Maywood Academy commencement took place in a college that has long been a center of Latino community activism — and which, like the academy, sits in a zone where immigration agents are raiding work places and public spaces, seizing people suspected of living in the U.S. without legal authorization as well as some whose immigration reviews are pending.
Valedictorian Abella Gutierrez captured the duality of so many of the graduations that have taken place all week in the nation’s second-largest school district — joy tempered with an undercurrent of fear.
“A lot of our class is very optimistic and humorous, and I feel pride knowing that I’m part of that, knowing that I’m making history here,” said Abella, who will be attending UCLA and intends to major in architecture. “So, yeah, I’m grateful. I’m happy.”
At the same time, “I’m very upset when it comes to the situations that have been happening at the moment,” she said, referring to raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE that touched off a week of chaotic, sporadically violent protests in parts of downtown.
“It’s a scar on our community, knowing that a lot of our parents and families have to worry about whether they’ll be able to participate in this event, because their safety is jeopardized.”
“It’s hard,” said salutatorian Mayah Flores, who plans to attend Cal State Long Beach as a liberal studies major, and then return to Maywood Academy as a teacher. “I feel like I should feel guilty for being so happy during such a trying time for people.”
The concerns are not theoretical. Two teachers at the school confirmed to The Times that immigration agents arrested a 10th grader, her younger sister and their mother and took them to a detention facility in Texas.
The arrest did not take place at the school — there are no such reported instances to date of agents entering a campus in Los Angeles County — although there were two unsuccessful attempts in April. Instead, the mother had been seized when she was reporting in to authorities as part of the family’s application for asylum, according to advocates for the family, which is from Guatemala.
“Johanna is the top student of the 10th grade at Maywood Academy High School, is an athlete on the swim team, and participates in the Hiking Club,” according to a gofundme page set up for the family. “She is a valuable member of the school community. We are asking for her and her family to be reunited with her sister and return home to our community.”
Although the auditorium, with a capacity of about 2,000, was mostly full to urge on the 230 graduates, some relatives stayed home.
After the graduation, one senior said in an interview that his father did not attend over fears that he might be taken into custody by immigration agents.
Social studies teacher Cherie McKernan said she gets messages from students “who are very afraid that their parents will be deported. One of the students in this line sent me a message saying that ICE was literally two stores down from where her parents work. So, it has been terrifying, very personal and horrifying to be involved. I feel like we’re right in the middle of it.”
“I apologize,” Carvalho told the graduates, “for the world you are inheriting is not a perfect world. The society we are bequeathing to you is not a perfect society. My generation and previous generations have not erased poverty, racism, oppression, depression. We have not addressed climate change. We have not dignified everyone in this land despite the words we use or the protections of our Constitution.”
Carvalho seemed to be talking about Trump as he continued: “For those who criticize and demonize the immigrant, I want him to know what an immigrant looks like. I want him to know what an undocumented immigrant looks like.”
“They’re looking at me,” he said, referring to his own arrival in the U.S. as an unauthorized teenager from Portugal.
Yet despite the ominous underpinning, people were determined to be festive, upbeat.
“I feel accomplished — hard work and dedication put into this, and now it’s just on to the next level,” said Adrian Abril. “I’m planning to go to Cal State Fullerton, and major in computer engineering.”
There also was the more traditional kind of nervousness.
“I’m not gonna lie. It’s scary,” said Sadie Padilla. “Because you lived your whole life, elementary school to high school, everything done for you. Now, it’s like, you gotta figure stuff out yourself and just have to see where that takes you.”
“No matter what is going on,” said McKernan, the social studies teacher, “they have triumphed, in this time, to graduate from high school — most of them the first graduates in their families. Their families moved here for this reason, and here they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams and going off to college.”
