On November 18, when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents arrived in the Triangle, about 20% of Durham Public Schools’ (DPS) 30,000 students stayed home as parents worried about agents showing up to schools, bus stops, and pickup lines.
There was no confirmed activity at schools—but with a federal administration that has been set on increasing deportation numbers, in part by targeting liberal cities, DPS families have been on edge.
The majority-member Durham Association of Educators (DAE) says teachers are not prepared in the event agents return.
“The fact of the matter is when CBP/ICE came to town, frontline staff never received training on what to do if CBP/ICE came to the door or approached our students or coworkers. This is a big failing on the [DPS] administration’s part,” DAE President Mika Twietmeyer told the INDY via email.
Last month’s deportation sweep added urgency to an already inflammatory debate between DPS’s administration, educators, and families: What can the district, with a large immigrant community and a 35% Hispanic/Latino student population, plan to do if targeted by a vicious federal administration? And who should know about those plans?
Superintendent Anthony Lewis has argued that principals know the procedures and that publicizing those plans would make them less effective and could even bring more unwanted attention to Durham. And the board of education has indicated that it can only go so far in trying to protect students from a vindictive executive branch that may decide to target immigrants in Durham.
But educators and some families have said they would feel safer if the district had a more public-facing policy.
“A private policy doesn’t give us any assurances,” Megan McCurley, a DPS parent with family members who are immigrants, told the INDY at a meeting between DPS and DAE before CBP’s arrival in the Triangle. “It doesn’t tell us what to expect, and it doesn’t give us any tools to hold accountable or to know if the principal of our school is doing what they’re expected to do.”
The DPS board of education, clearly spooked by November’s enforcement surge, has started moving closer to the DAE’s requests and nudging Lewis to move with them. That’s a familiar dynamic in the district—the board’s elected officials are trying to prove that they are listening to community members, while the superintendent’s team is trying to safeguard the district.
Several board members have indicated that they would like to vote on some policy additions at the board’s December 11 meeting, even if they then revisit them in January.
The policy and procedures in question are not just about theory and values—there are real risks to DPS families.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has said it does not intend to raid schools, but in January, the administration rescinded a policy that discouraged ICE agents from carrying out enforcement activities in “sensitive locations” like courthouses, hospitals, and schools.
Prior to the arrival of federal immigration agents in November, Durham has previously been singled out by the Trump administration. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security labeled Durham a sanctuary jurisdiction, though Durham officials denied the characterization. Durham’s city council also declared the city a “Fourth Amendment Workplace,” which made national headlines.
The DAE is trying to push the superintendent and the board to try to protect students even outside of school grounds—including on their daily commutes to and from school. That’s partly prompted by memories of the 2016 arrest of Wildin Acosta, an undocumented then-Riverside High School senior who was detained by ICE (under the Obama administration) as he headed to school.
“What is the protocol if ICE were to come near or on campus?” DAE representative Allison Swaim asked the superintendent and his team at a recent meeting. “What do we do if [ICE doesn’t] have a warrant and they are wanting to come on campus? How might we recognize suspected immigration enforcement vehicles?”
While many educators have said that they would physically intervene if their students were targeted, the superintendent has been adamant that the district cannot and will not ask staff to put themselves at risk.
“Dr. Lewis and the Board of Education continue to carefully consider a wide range of issues related to federal law enforcement activity and have a detailed plan to vet warrants and ensure FERPA compliance, DPS Chief Communications Officer Sheena Cooper told INDY via email.
Lewis has also said publicly that he is worried about drawing more attention to Durham. At a meeting in October, Lewis even convinced the DAE to cut off the ongoing livestream, meant to allow greater accessibility for those who couldn’t make it to an in-person meeting on a Tuesday night.
“I will not put any student or any family or this district or this county in jeopardy by having a conversation like this that’s being broadcast and recorded,” Lewis said. “I simply will not do that.”
(The superintendent also left the conference table to ask the INDY, the only recognizable news outlet in the room, to stop recording and to not report on that portion of the meeting, arguing that it wasn’t a public meeting. The meeting, a “meet and confer” session with DAE representatives, was convened under board policy 7215, which states that meet and confer sessions will be open to the public in compliance with NC Open Meetings Law. The INDY declined.)
The superintendent’s fears are not entirely unfounded—in the next-door Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system, the superintendent and board chair have been summoned to a North Carolina House of Representatives oversight hearing after the rabble-rousing “Libs of TikTok” posted a clip of board of education Chair George Griffin discussing the district’s decision to say “no thanks” to parts of the N. C. General Assembly’s “parent’s bill of rights.”
On November 20, the Durham school board unanimously passed a resolution that details that any requests by immigration officials to enter schools should be reviewed by the superintendent, the district shall provide families with information about their rights, and the superintendent shall “ensure training for all school personnel on the district’s protocols for responding to requests from immigration authorities.”
Several of those provisions were actually already in a DPS policy passed in 2017 (“I think we can lead the way here in letting other districts know this is how we protect our students,” said then-board member Mike Lee at that 2017 meeting).
But at some point between 2017 and 2020, that policy was revised without a vote. The board is supposed to have sole policymaking power, but that policy was apparently unintentionally stripped of several provisions by a bureaucratic shuffle of policy reordering and consolidation.
With a series of crises (teacher pay, transportation, and now an enrollment drop), the board has been playing a game of whack-a-mole rather than doing much proactive policy planning. The board’s newly formed policy committee has been eyeing the policy regarding immigration enforcement for revision, but only took it up this month after spending recent meetings wordsmithing a draft for a state-mandated school-day cell phone ban that the legislature requires districts to have in place by January.
At the December meeting of the policy committee, board members discussed reinstating those 2017 provisions, though Deputy Superintendent Tanya Giovanni said that they are already a part of DPS procedure. Board members, though, likely feeling pressure from the public, said that putting them back into policy could serve as a good starting point for further revisions.
Lewis also indicated that he is more inclined to consider the DAE’s suggestions than he was prior to the CBP sweeps. The district, Lewis says, has started to procure thousands of so-called red cards, which outline people’s rights if they are approached by law enforcement, and will soon make them available to students and families.
Twietmeyer, the DAE president, called the resolution “a good first step” but added that “we are not confident that DPS administration will act to protect our students and colleagues short of the [board] mandating it through policy.”
The DAE has floated a draft of an updated policy with provisions and protections that go far beyond the 2017 version. The draft states that “non-local law enforcement . . . are not permitted to arrest any students on school premises or at a school event. This includes parking lots, bus stops, on buses, sporting events, meetings, dances, field trips, in any part of the school building, classrooms, traveling to and from school/a school event, etc.”
Even with pressure from educators and families, board members have indicated that they are unlikely to try to extend a broad bubble of protection beyond school buildings. In conversations around the recent resolution and policy changes, members repeatedly asked the board’s lawyer how legally sound the language was and backed away from anything they saw as potential overreach. Cooper, the district’s communications officer, told INDY that the district is “carefully reviewing the policy changes with our legal counsel” and “will communicate openly with staff and families and provide resources to help navigate these changes.”
At the December 11 meeting, the board will consider updating its policy with the 2017 provisions and the administration will, somewhat reluctantly, bring an update on the district’s procedures—though administrators have promised that the update will be sufficiently vague.
Board members say that some movement is better than none. “The community wants to see progress,” board member Natalie Beyer said at a December meeting. “Not perfection.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].