If ICE Shows Up for One of My Students, They Will Need to Take Me First

by Thomas Courtney

President Trump is making some serious executive decisions on immigration. Some of these orders are causing intensive debate among teachers and administrators in local school systems.

However you see the new Trump administration, one thing is for sure: the immigrant communities that trust me to keep their children safe are now afraid. And that’s a problem for me, because I pride myself on keeping fear out of my classroom. And so does every other teacher that I know.

For example, whenever a school shooting occurs, you’re bound to find a teacher hero that day stepping up. In every instance, politicians call out teachers for being heroes — for protecting students from school shooters.

We’ve been called heroes for managing our students during the pandemic and any number of other traumas. Why then, would anyone think a teacher like me would stand by while someone in a uniform dragged a kid out of my school for just being there?

My district, San Diego Unified, has announced that should ICE come knocking, they will need a warrant. Should ICE come seeking my immigrant students for deportation to perhaps Guantanamo Bay, or perhaps by military airplane with or without their family to their native country, they will need a warrant.

I’m required to call the principal, or vice principal, and wait for administrative help. I’m proud to work for those administrators and my district But if ICE comes to my classroom, that isn’t what I’ll do.

President Trump can sign his executive orders in the oval office. But I’ll make my own, right here in my office — under the American flag that hangs in my classroom and next to the bulletin board where I display students work. And these are my three executive decisions:

No One Touches My Kids While I’m on Duty

Any day of the week, I don’t care if there is an active shooter, or if someone holds a slip of paper, if a student doesn’t want to go somewhere with someone they do not know on my watch, they aren’t going anywhere.

Nobody Takes a Student From My Supervision, Unless I Know They Are Going Home to Mom and Dad

One of the hallmark rules of teaching is simple: Kids do not go home with anyone but the people who are allowed to pick them up. Unless a warrant is signed by a parent and specifically states that the parent is allowing ICE to remove my student, they aren’t going anywhere.

Nothing Supercedes the Oath I Took When I Became a Teacher

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My educator’s oath, the day I was sworn in as a California teacher, included the phrase that I “will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.” And I intend to faithfully fulfill that duty until the day I no longer am teaching.

I do not need a superior to understand that my allegiance to protect my students in a classroom of the United States grants me the right to fulfill this duty. My teaching order will trump that of the President’s at that time.

Although Trump officials can spout ad nauseum they aren’t here for anyone but criminals, I know one thing — none of my great kids are criminals.

What I am not sure folks understand out there is that I am not alone. All around the nation there are teachers like me, who will not allow their students to be taken from their classrooms. Teachers, regardless of what you have heard recently, take their pledges seriously.

Of course, Trump appointed officials keep telling us that they are not going to go into schools and drag kids out. But can we trust that? As someone who hears a dozen times a day that the homework was done, just left at home, I’ll take official assurances with a grain of salt.

I’ll let others debate what can happen and stick to what I know for sure — my sworn duty to my students.

Thomas Courtney is a 27-year educator and teacher in Southeast San Diego. In 2021, he was selected as SDUSD’s Elementary District Teacher of the Year. He is currently secretary of the SDUSD Exemplary Teacher Advisory Council, composed of district and county teachers of the year in San Diego