“Labor is Where It’s At:” Oakland Teachers Fight Back Against ICE’s Attack on Students and Their Families

Leer en español

It was a Sunday when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared outside the home of one of Jessie Papalia’s students in Oakland. Because the agents came outside of the work week, the family couldn’t call the county-wide hotline to seek legal service. They didn’t leave their apartment for over 24 hours for fear of detainment and possibly deportation. The student didn’t come to school for days.

Schoolwide and countywide systems for immigrant support don’t work on Sundays, but that didn’t keep the family from reaching out to their child’s teacher for help. “Teachers are some of the only English-speaking US citizens in their community,” Papalia said.

Papalia teaches newcomer students — those who are in their first years in American schools — at Bridges Academy at Melrose in East Oakland. Most of her students come from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. After that incident with ICE outside her student’s door on February 23, Papalia along with fellow teachers and coworkers in the district organized a response to the increasing threats of deportation. Moments like that have become commonplace as ICE has expanded its deportation and intimidation campaign under the Trump presidency. “It’s been a crisis since then,” Papalia said.

Workers across Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) schools formed the OEA Rapid Response Team this April in affiliation with the Oakland Education Association, which is the labor union for teachers and staff in the district. Education workers saw how school protocols and the county-wide support system did not entirely protect all students at all times from ICE, so they stepped in to try to fill the gap.

Even before the increase in ICE activity, immigrant students and their families turned to teachers to help them navigate the complexities of the legal system.

Sasha Rockwell, a 5th grade teacher also at Bridges Academy who was on maternity leave at the time, went with one student and the student’s mother to the courthouse for their immigration hearing.

“Our kids are going to court often throughout the week,” Rockwell said. One family in March reached out to their students’ teachers when they received a message from ICE that was, as is usual, written only in English.

“Our kids are going to court often throughout the week,” Rockwell said. One family in March reached out to their students’ teachers when they received a message from ICE that was, as is usual, written only in English.

The Rapid Response Team wanted to organize to have more formal support so they could help more students and push the county to expand services. They voted to work on three projects.

Firstly, they are pressing the County Board of Supervisors to fund the hotline for the Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP) to run 24/7, since ICE doesn’t restrict their threats to work or school hours.

The union’s Rapid Response Team is also developing a network of lead teachers across school sites to meet with families who approach them and inform them of available services. And finally they are raising money for their Legal Defense Fund that can pay down payments for immigration attorneys to protect families in the district. The goal for the fund is now $50,000, and they’ve surpassed $35,000. Every $2,000 is a downpayment for an immigration lawyer to represent one family.

As ICE becomes more brazenly lawless, counsel from attorneys is more necessary for immigrants than ever. Agents wait in courtrooms to detain and deport people attending mandated hearings — it happened to one of Papalia’s student’s cousins and their family. Lawyers can advise immigrants to attend hearings through video conference, for instance, to avoid that threat. Since there is no public defender assigned to non-citizens, having a trusted attorney who is paired with a family through the district’s Newcomer Office and paid by the Fund is crucial.

Members of the team have seen overwhelming support from district residents for the workers’ efforts to protect their neighbors. The union members organized flyering for the defense fund across Oakland neighborhoods earlier this month, and they plan to continue that outreach regularly.

Rockwell was impressed by the response. “People stopped me on the street and praised me for what I was doing just from a quick read of the flyer.” She’s urging people to share and post the flyer wherever they are.

In addition to filling the gaps left by a legal system stacked against immigrants, workers on the team are advocating for the County to expand the ACILEP hotline to run all hours of the week.

Eric Espinosa, an OUSD teacher at Skyline High School, recently spoke on this issue alongside other union members at a Board of Supervisors meeting. He’s been hearing students in his classes, some of which are composed entirely of newcomer students, talk about ICE presence they had heard about in their neighborhoods, “but they wouldn’t be very loud about it because they didn’t want to out their own status by talking about it too much.”

When Espinosa and other teachers spoke to the Board, they insisted on the need for regular and reliable access to support. He recalled two others who highlighted that ICE knows when the limited hours of the rapid response hotline, ”so that’s a liability.” He’s hoping that along with expanded hotline services, more people will sign up as bilingual volunteers for ACILEP.

The Rapid Response Team was formed by workers who see the power they already have and are organizing to protect families and pressure the county to do more.

The Rapid Response Team was formed by workers who see the power they already have and are organizing to protect families and pressure the county to do more. As Papalia sees it, the attack on immigrants is also an attack on workers: “the LA raids have been workplace raids.” That assault on workers has met a reaction from workers. The OEA, she believes, has shown an example in this case of how unions can empower members to fight back. The union supported the Rapid Response Team, and they turned out members to pickets that successfully shut down a facility in San Francisco that was feared to be used for ICE arrests.

The resistance to ICE requires mass numbers of people and, in Papalia’s words, “Labor is where it’s at.”

***       

Resources

Have you recently seen, interacted with, or been detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)? Call the ACILEP Hotline.

You can donate to the Rapid Response Legal Defense Fund.

You can get alerts about mobilizing in response to Bay Area ICE activity by signing up for Bay Resistance.