As if ICE couldn’t get anymore cruel, agents have been spotted and recorded abducting parents at school bus stops. Not to mention around daycares, as was the case in North Carolina. But in Utah, their capturing of immigrant parents led to numerous children being stranded at their school. With parents being targeted over their citizenship status, many people are deciding to shelter in place. And this is why. Now children have to worry their parents might disappear before they can even tell them about their day at school.
Once video of the incident, which happened at West Lake STEM Middle School in Utah, was posted to r/PublicFreakout. A woman drives her vehicle down a street and points out a family being targeted by ICE agents. She says, “Bringing your kid to school and getting picked up by ICE,” while a young girl sits inside her parent’s vehicle. Her parents had just been taken by ICE.
Flabbergasted by the entire incident, the woman recording stops and checks on the young girl. She ask an ICE agent, “Are you guys gonna call somebody for her or are you guys just gonna leave her here?”
An officer closes the door to the vehicle where the young girl, presumably a teenager, sits inside looking incredibly scared. The woman recording says, “Go take somebody else that’s actually committing a crime, not taking their [expletive] kid to school!”
One person commented on the video, “I just want to raise my family and be happy,” while another commenter asked, “Can anyone with a brain larger than mine tell me what is going to happen in the end? Like is this going to stop or is ICE just going to continue to get away with doing this to people?” ICE in particular is incredibly unpopular among Democrats; the opposite is said of Republicans, according to Pew Research. When children at daycares and schools are being circled like prey, it’s hard to look like the good guys.
A commenter replied to this, “It’s not going to stop. Once the immigrant ‘problem’ is taken care of they’ll invent a new one to go after. Drugs probably. Fascists always need a bad guy to fall back on.”
One commenter suggested protesting: “They need to band together and refuse to let their kids attend the school until they do something about preventing ICE from being there. They only get money if the kids show up, when that’s threatened in any meaningful way they’ll take action real quick,” which is clever.
Many schools in the U.S. factor in ADA (Average Daily Attendance) when it comes time to budget. Fewer students with fewer absentees is ideal or suffer a budget cut. And when times are already tough, no one can afford a budget cut.
