A Baltimore school told its immigrant families they were safe. Then ICE came to campus.

The seventh grader barely touched the vanilla slushie her teachers ordered to replace the drink she abandoned inside her parents’ battered SUV.

Instead, she replayed the video of what happened that June morning, over and over: Federal immigration agents pulled her father, Jesus Acevedo Sanchez, to the ground, while the girl and her mother screamed inside the car. The violent encounter unfolded feet from her school’s front steps as she was dropped off at Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle; it ended with both her parents in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The incident marked the first reported ICE arrest on Maryland public school grounds. In minutes, it unraveled the promise Commodore staff had been making all year: that immigrant families were safe there.

“I’ve had great relationships with the parents because I try to keep it as honest as possible. And I try to make them feel safe,” said Rosa Perez-Quezada, a dean at the East Baltimore school of about 800 students, 40% of whom are Hispanic. “But how, in all honesty, can I do that?”

As immigration enforcement ramps up under President Donald Trump’s administration, Commodore teachers double as counselors and social workers, answering weekend calls from scared students and visiting their families at home. The school has seen a growing number of immigrant parents withdraw their children — about 20 kids last year, Perez-Quezada said. Some left for their home countries, often places plagued by violence and poverty, where education isn’t guaranteed.

Now, with ICE at its doorstep, the school that is used to parents clamoring to get in is begging them not to leave.

A year of fear

For decades, leaders at Commodore have tried to make their school a sanctuary for kids and their families, many of whom are from immigrant and low-income backgrounds. The elementary grades draw students primarily from Southeast Baltimore, which has a growing Latino community.

When he was hired to turn around the school 16 years ago, Principal Marc Martin led his staff in knocking on families’ doors to help rebuild trust after years of upheaval and high teacher turnover.

“Wherever there’s a need, that’s where we run,” Martin said.

Today, Commodore is a “one-stop shop,” Community School Coordinator Deshawn Batson said. Families can use the school’s washer and dryer, take ingredients from the food pantry and get rental- or utility-payment assistance, thanks to a partnership with United Way of Central Maryland.

Roughly one-third of students are learning English, but all kids learn together, regardless of language differences. The school enrolls nearly 600 more kids than it did in 2010, and more of them get into the city’s selective high schools. Scores on the state English test across all grades have risen more than 16 percentage points since 2022.

Kids who leave for another middle school tend to transfer back, said Aisha Moody, dean of the middle school. And, when families move, they often request that their children stay at Commodore.

“With any city population, you’re gonna have families who are more transient,” Moody said. “But I feel like our students, even if they move, they don’t leave.”

Front office assistant Shasy Brizuela fears that’s starting to change, at least for immigrant families. Lately, she’s the one pleading with them to stay.

The bilingual daughter of immigrants, Brizuela has offered to take kids to school herself if their parents were too afraid to do so. She and other Commodore staff members have warned families when ICE vehicles were spotted nearby, helped parents draft guardianship papers in case they’re deported and written letters of support for students’ family members fighting to stay in the country.

But there was only so much staff could do about parents’ mounting fears. Though ICE officials pledged their agents would not enter schools, they inched closer to Southeast Baltimore campuses this spring.

Kids felt it, too. In internal emails shared with The Banner, a Commodore teacher recalled a child “crying uncontrollably” on the way to lunch because his dad had an upcoming date in immigration court. Another flagged that a normally engaged, happy girl had grown quiet and “increasingly checked out” because her father had been ordered to leave the U.S. and her grandmother was expected to die any day.

Latino students were growing more withdrawn and anxious, Moody said.

“The way they’re coming into the building, the smiles have diminished,” said Moody, who’s noticed more kids coming to school with their hoods pulled up, hiding their faces. “They seem to be more easily agitated.”

ICE at their doors

The day before immigration agents followed the Sanchez family to campus, Melanie Sessa chaperoned one of the couple’s daughters on a field trip to Hersheypark in Pennsylvania.

The seventh grader insisted on buying a gift for her sister, a second grader at Wolfe Street Academy in Upper Fells Point. She chatted with Sessa, a special-education teacher, about home projects she’d done with her parents. The next day, that girl was fielding calls from family members after her parents had been detained.

“As a mom myself, like I truly can’t imagine a situation in which I’m separated from my children,” Sessa said. “I never had to fear that as a middle school student.”

The Banner is not naming the children involved at the request of their family’s attorney.

A little past 7 a.m. on June 11, the girls’ father and his partner, Adriana Gavilan Sanchez, were taking their daughters to school when unmarked cars cut them off and hit their SUV from behind, according to an affidavit by Acevedo Sanchez.

He said men who pointed guns at his family weren’t wearing ICE or police uniforms and drove unmarked cars. Acevedo Sanchez panicked and drove to Commodore.

“I was just so worried that I was going to die or that my family would be killed,” Acevedo Sanchez said in an affidavit in his case, which was translated from Spanish. “I was focused on getting to school because I thought that if we got to school there would be people there who could protect my girls and keep us safe.”

ICE officials initially claimed officers followed Acevedo Sanchez onto campus because he’d dragged an immigration officer with his car and that Gavilan Sanchez punched ICE officers at the school. The agency’s latest filings, however, make no mention of an alleged assault by Gavilan Sanchez and describe an officer being knocked to the ground, not dragged, when Acevedo Sanchez drove away.

The federal government wants to deport both parents, court documents show.

The fallout

When Perez-Quezada ran outside during the chaos, the seventh grader ran toward her, repeating: “He didn’t do anything!” In her affidavit, the girl’s mother said she hears her daughters’ screams every time she closes her eyes.

As agents handcuffed their father, staffers ushered the girl and her younger sister into a school office. Teachers formed two lines, like a tunnel, Perez-Quezada said, to offer other kids safe passage into the building. One walked two Latino brothers back from a cemetery where they’d hidden. Kids and staff cried.

School district officials, elected leaders and therapists flocked to the school, where teachers ordered the Sanchezes’ daughters a new breakfast from Dunkin’.

The younger girl played games to stay distracted; her older sister barely nibbled on the pizza staff ordered later. Seventh grade teachers stayed by her side while the eighth grade team, whose students were done for the year, covered their classes, Sessa said.

Later that day, the seventh grader went back to her house to collect their things before the girls went to stay with a relative. She took emergency money and the documents that prove her U.S. citizenship.

Vernon Liggins, the acting Baltimore field office director for ICE, called Martin that day and apologized for making the arrest on campus, the principal said. He doesn’t know where the school goes from here because “this is so far outside of the realm of what I imagined could happen.”

But Martin and his staff said that’s made it easier, not harder, to come back next year for the kids who need protection more than ever.

“It is a fire lighter in me,” middle school inclusion teacher Jamie Cassermere said. “All children here deserve to come to school and get an education free of politics, free of law enforcement, free of whatever else is going on.”

Martin said school leaders will spend the summer figuring out what to do if ICE comes back and how to reassure families and staff.

The school’s rapid response team is poised to assist in times of crisis, including with a direct line to lawyers.

Perez-Quezada is rethinking the promises she can make to immigrant families. Beyond the walls of her school, “how can I assure them any other safety?” she asked.

“I don’t want to lie to them.”

Banner reporter Shayla Colon contributed to this story.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.